La Terra trema (1948)
Country: IT
Technical: bw 160m
Director: Luchino Visconti
Cast: locals
Synopsis:
The fishermen of the small Sicilian town of Aci Trezza struggle to make a decent living under the harsh price-fixing of the local wholesalers. When one of the most established families decides to mortgage the house and go into business for itself, it seems to hold out a beacon of hope for the community. But a storm wrecks the boat and, with no buffers and one misfortune following on another, they are quickly reduced to misery so that a return to the mercies of the wholesalers seems inevitable.
Review:
The pride and communist ideals of the young Antonio Valestro are clearly near to Visconti's heart in this early neo-realist film. Apart from the extraordinary feat of a local population acting out its own story (more or less) with an astonishing degree of ease before the camera, some of the visual effects (black clad women standing in vigil against the silhouettes of offshore rocks, slow pans across the seafront taking in complex crowd action) prefigure the directorial flair of such as The Leopard. The drama itself, Zolaesque in trajectory and extremely long, is nevertheless an unbearably moving depiction of the crushing of the human spirit that must rank alongside the most important films of all time.
Country: IT
Technical: bw 160m
Director: Luchino Visconti
Cast: locals
Synopsis:
The fishermen of the small Sicilian town of Aci Trezza struggle to make a decent living under the harsh price-fixing of the local wholesalers. When one of the most established families decides to mortgage the house and go into business for itself, it seems to hold out a beacon of hope for the community. But a storm wrecks the boat and, with no buffers and one misfortune following on another, they are quickly reduced to misery so that a return to the mercies of the wholesalers seems inevitable.
Review:
The pride and communist ideals of the young Antonio Valestro are clearly near to Visconti's heart in this early neo-realist film. Apart from the extraordinary feat of a local population acting out its own story (more or less) with an astonishing degree of ease before the camera, some of the visual effects (black clad women standing in vigil against the silhouettes of offshore rocks, slow pans across the seafront taking in complex crowd action) prefigure the directorial flair of such as The Leopard. The drama itself, Zolaesque in trajectory and extremely long, is nevertheless an unbearably moving depiction of the crushing of the human spirit that must rank alongside the most important films of all time.
Country: IT
Technical: bw 160m
Director: Luchino Visconti
Cast: locals
Synopsis:
The fishermen of the small Sicilian town of Aci Trezza struggle to make a decent living under the harsh price-fixing of the local wholesalers. When one of the most established families decides to mortgage the house and go into business for itself, it seems to hold out a beacon of hope for the community. But a storm wrecks the boat and, with no buffers and one misfortune following on another, they are quickly reduced to misery so that a return to the mercies of the wholesalers seems inevitable.
Review:
The pride and communist ideals of the young Antonio Valestro are clearly near to Visconti's heart in this early neo-realist film. Apart from the extraordinary feat of a local population acting out its own story (more or less) with an astonishing degree of ease before the camera, some of the visual effects (black clad women standing in vigil against the silhouettes of offshore rocks, slow pans across the seafront taking in complex crowd action) prefigure the directorial flair of such as The Leopard. The drama itself, Zolaesque in trajectory and extremely long, is nevertheless an unbearably moving depiction of the crushing of the human spirit that must rank alongside the most important films of all time.