Salvatore Giuliano | |
---|---|
Directed by | Francesco Rosi |
Screenplay by | Francesco Rosi Suso Cecchi d'Amico Enzo Provenzale Franco Solinas |
Produced by | Franco Cristaldi |
Starring | Salvo Randone Frank Wolff |
Cinematography | Gianni Di Venanzo |
Edited by | Mario Serandrei |
Music by | Piero Piccioni |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Lux Film [2] |
Release date |
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Running time | 123 minutes |
Country | Italy |
Languages | Italian Sicilian |
Salvatore Giuliano is a 1962 Italian drama film directed by Francesco Rosi. Using techniques of the documentary film, [1] [4] it recounts the criminal career of famous Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano between 1943 and 1950, his death. In 2008, the film was included in the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved , a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978." [5]
In 1950, Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano is found dead in a backyard. According to the authorities' official announcement, Giuliano was killed in a shooting with the carabinieri, but asked by reporters some locals recall that they first heard three single shots and much later shots from a submachine gun.
In a series of nonlinear flashbacks, [6] the film recounts Giuliano's criminal career, starting in 1943 after shooting a policeman. In 1945, Giuliano's gang is officially declared part of the military arm of the separatist party MIS which fights for Sicily's independence. The separatist movement is supported by the Allied Forces and the Mafia. After the 1946 declaration of Sicily's autonomous status, MIS' former militant members are granted amnesty, but Giuliano proceeds with his illegal activities, entangled in kidnappings and blackmail. While still adored by the local people at first, his popularity wanes after the 1947 Portella della Ginestra massacre, where his gang shoots eleven people during a May 1st gathering of supporters of the Communist and Socialist parties. One after one, his confidants are betrayed or cooperate with the police. During a meeting, Giualiano is shot by his former closest companion, Gaspare Pisciotta. Afterwards, the carabinieri, who had been waiting nearby, stage a death during a shootout.
Two years later, Pisciotta and the highest ranking members of Giuliano's gang are sentenced to life for the Portella della Ginestra killings. Pisciotta accuses the Mafia and members of the authorities of having given Giuliano the order for the massacre. In 1954, Pisciotta is poisoned in prison. The film ends with the shooting of a Mafia informant in public in 1960.
After having been denied a public funding, [8] Salvatore Giuliano was produced by Franco Cristaldi with funding by the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. [9] Filming took place in 1961 [10] at the locations of the actual events in Sicily, using mostly local non-professionals as actors. [7] [11]
Although the titular character of the film, Giuliano himself is seen only briefly, either as a dead man after his killing, or as an indistinct figure. [7] [8] By these means, Rosi (in the words of critic Michel Ciment) stressed his rejection of identification with his subject. [12]
Salvatore Giuliano was received well by Italian critics and audiences (although it was denied the entry to the Venice Film Festival), [8] was awarded numerous national film prizes [2] and reached number ten in the list of the most successful Italian films of 1962. [8]
While it received a Silver Bear at the 12th Berlin International Film Festival and was titled "a major Italian film" by the critic of weekly German newspaper Die Zeit , [1] the reaction of New York Times critic Howard Thompson upon the film's 1964 New York premiere was reserved, titling it "a curiously disjointed drama with a superbly imaginative camera eye." [13]
In later years, critics' opinions of the film were unanimously positive, calling it "almost certainly the best film about the social and political forces that have shaped Sicily" (Derek Malcolm, The Guardian ), [7] "a landmark in political cinema" (Trevor Johnston, Time Out Film Guide ), [4] and an "exciting piece of filmmaking" (Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times) [14] by a "bravura director" and "inspired innovator" (Michael Sragow, The New Yorker ). [11]
Film historian Gino Moliterno argued that "Rosi's highly original strategy in this landmark film is to aim at neither an "objective" journalistic documentary nor a fictional recreation but to employ as wide a range of disparate formal and stylistic elements as necessary to conduct a committed search for the truth that becomes, in a sense, its own narrative." [6]
Director Martin Scorsese cited Salvatore Giuliano as one of his twelve favourite films of all time. [15]
Salvatore Giuliano was an Italian bandit, who rose to prominence in the disorder that followed the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. In September of that year, Giuliano became an outlaw after shooting and killing a police officer who tried to arrest him for black market food smuggling, at a time when 70 percent of Sicily's food supply was provided by the black market. He maintained a band of subordinates for most of his career. He was a flamboyant, high-profile criminal, attacking the police at least as often as they sought him. In addition, he was a local power-broker in Sicilian politics between 1945 and 1948, including his role as a nominal colonel for the Movement for the Independence of Sicily. He and his band were held legally responsible for the Portella della Ginestra massacre, though there is some doubt about their role in the numerous deaths which occurred.
Mario Scelba was an Italian politician and statesman who served as the 33rd prime minister of Italy from February 1954 to July 1955. A founder of Christian Democracy (DC), Scelba was one of the longest-serving Minister of the Interior in the history of the republic, having served at the Viminale Palace in three distinct terms from 1947 to 1962.
The Sicilian is a novel by American author Mario Puzo. Published in 1984 by Random House Publishing Group (ISBN 0-671-43564-7), it is based on the life of Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano. It is set in the same universe as Puzo's most famous work, The Godfather (1969), and contains characters from The Godfather. It is regarded as The Godfather's literary sequel and is the second book in The Godfather novel series. It was adapted into a film in 1987, though all Godfather references were removed for copyright reasons in the film adaptation.
Ignazio Buttitta was an Italian poet who wrote predominantly in Sicilian.
Francesco Rosi was an Italian filmmaker, screenwriter and theatre director. His film The Mattei Affair won the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Rosi's films, especially those of the 1960s and 1970s, often appeared to have political messages. While the topics of his later films became less politically oriented and more angled toward literature, he continued to direct until 1997, his last film being the adaptation of Primo Levi's book, The Truce.
Gaspare Pisciotta was a companion of the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano, and considered to be the co-leader of his outlaw band. He is also the Judas in Giuliano's legend as he betrayed Giuliano and killed him.
The Mattei Affair is a 1972 Italian drama film directed by Francesco Rosi. It depicts the life and mysterious death of Enrico Mattei, an Italian businessman who in the aftermath of World War II managed to avoid the sale of the nascent Italian oil and hydrocarbon industry to US companies and developed them in the Eni, a state-owned oil company which rivaled the "Seven Sisters" for oil and gas deals in Northern African and Middle Eastern countries.
Bernardo Mattarella was an Italian politician for the Christian Democrat party. He was a cabinet minister of Italy several times, becoming one of the most important politicians of his generation.
The Sicilian is a 1987 epic historical crime film directed by Michael Cimino. The film was adapted by Steve Shagan, and later rewritten by Cimino and Gore Vidal from Mario Puzo's 1984 novel of the same name. Christopher Lambert stars as Salvatore Giuliano, the infamous bandit who tried to liberate early 1950s Sicily from Italian rule. The film also stars Terence Stamp, Joss Ackland, John Turturro and Barbara Sukowa.
The Antimafia Commission is a bicameral commission of the Italian Parliament, composed of members from the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic. The first commission, formed in 1963, was established as a body of inquiry tasked with investigating the "phenomenon of the [Sicilian] Mafia". Subsequent commissions expanded their scope to investigate all "organized crime of the Mafia type", which included other major criminal organizations in Italy, such as the Camorra, the 'Ndrangheta, and the Sacra Corona Unita.
Girolamo Li Causi was an Italian politician and a leader of the Italian Communist Party who was a prominent figure in the struggle for land reform and against the Mafia in Sicily. He labelled large estates Sicily's central problem.
The Portella della Ginestra massacre refers to the killing of 11 people and 27 wounded during May Day celebrations in Sicily on 1 May 1947, in the municipality of Piana degli Albanesi. Those held responsible were the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano and his gang, although their motives and intentions are still a matter of controversy.
The Movement for the Independence of Sicily was a separatist Sicilian political party originally active in Sicily from 1943 to 1951. Its best electoral result was in 1947, when it won 8.8% of the votes in the Sicilian regional election and had nine regional deputies elected.
Salvatore Randone, known professionally as Salvo Randone, was an Italian stage, film and television actor.
Pietro Scaglione was an Italian magistrate and Chief Prosecutor of Palermo, Sicily. He was killed by the Mafia in 1971.
Francesco Cuccia, also known as Don Ciccio, was a member of the Sicilian Mafia and one-time mayor of Piana dei Greci. He is best known as the Mafia boss who triggered Benito Mussolini’s war on the Mafia, after humiliating him while visiting Piana dei Greci in 1924. He was described by the writer Norman Lewis as a Mafia potentate with an inflamed sense of his own importance. The Sicilian writer Giuseppe Passarello called him "Cuccia il sanguinario".
Salvatore Giuliano is an opera in one act by Lorenzo Ferrero to an Italian-language libretto by Giuseppe Di Leva, which was conceived to be performed in tandem with Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana. The work was commissioned by the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma and premiered there on 25 January 1986.
Francesco Renda was an Italian Marxist historian, Communist politician and a university professor.
Giuseppe Casarrubea was an Italian historian and author.