Italy,
1962, 125 min
Shown in 1997
CREDITS
- dir
-
Francesco Rosi
- prod
-
Franco Cristaldi, Lionello Santi
- scr
-
Francesco Rosi, Suso Cecchi d’ Amico, Enzo Provenzale
- cam
-
Gianni di Venanzo
- editor
-
Mario Serandrei
- cast
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Frank Wolff, Salvo Randone, Federico Zardi, Pietro Cammarata, Giuseppe Teti, Cosimo Torino
- source
-
Cinecittà International, Via Tuscolana, 1055, 00173 Rome, Itoly. FAX: 39-6-722-862-33
-
COMMENTS
Francesco Rosi was the recipient of the Akira Kurosawa Award in 1997. Rosi appeared in person.
OTHER
The film that brought Francesco Rosi international prominence, Salvatore Giuliano is the first of his signature mosaic-style exposés of real characters and incidents. The historical Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian bandit turned Mafia boss who, after the war, became an important player in Sicily’s guerrilla independence movement (Interestingly, one of Rosi’s script collaborators was Franco Solinas, who later wrote The Battle of Algiers and State of Seige). The film opens on Giuliano’s corpse and unfolds back to his life and times and forward to events following his death. Giuliano himself is barely glimpsed; but this portrait of betrayal and compromises with authority—gangsters and state in collusion to keep the peasants and urban poor in their place—set against the scarred landscape of Sicily, explains much about the life that produced this illustrious corpse. Rosi’s elliptical style is not concerned with the truth of historical events, but with the act of seeking the truth, which is crucial and unending. “With my films,” he said, “I have tried more than anything else to understand my country and to tell its story.” This film of harsh poetry and vivid composition was called by historian Georges Sadoul “the most important Italian film of the early sixties.”
FACTOID #147
The Coppola clan (Francis, Eleanor, Sofia and Roman) is the family with the most filmmakers represented at the Festival. Films screened include Apocalypse Now (1990); One from the Heart (1990); Lick the Star (1998); The Virgin Suicides (2000); CQ (2002); and On the Set of CQ (2002). (And that’s not even counting onscreen appearances by cousins Nic Cage and Jason Schwartzman.)
