An exemplary example of didactic cinema
It is perhaps not without significance that Guiliano Montaldo worked as Assistant Director on Gillo Pontecorvo's brilliant KAPO, since there is a tangible link in terms of attitude, emotional power and political commitment between this film and Pontecorvo's other outstanding films.
Great films are, very often, a means of conveying ideas, and, as Pudovkin once said, film is the greatest teacher because it reaches us both through the head and the emotions. Maybe this is why politically correct authoritarians are always chiding us `not to be sentimental' since emotions are something these control freaks can't orchestrate!
Whatever one's views about the political sympathies of Sacco and Vanzetti, this film shows that they were victims of the hysterical climate of the times and place in which they found themselves, and their plight is represented with great humanism, empathy and power, helped in no small measure by the superb musical score of Ennio Morricone, which must rank as one of his very best. Montaldo's whole technique is thoroughly cinematic, and the acting and all technical credits are faultless.
One somewhat disturbing aspect of this film however, was when I saw it in the USA, Sacco in his final speech from the dock declared, `We stand here because we are anarchists', (it struck at the time because I never thought I'd live to see the day that such a piece of dialogue would be delivered in a film distributed by MGM!), but, in its only screening in the UK on BBC television, this line was changed to `We stand here because we are radicals'. Hmmm! Not quite the same thing. On two other occasions I have noticed `creative subtitling' on French speaking movies, so maybe we should start a campaign for accurate and faithful subtitles!
A brilliant film, in my all-time top 100, so when is anyone going to issue it on video?
Great films are, very often, a means of conveying ideas, and, as Pudovkin once said, film is the greatest teacher because it reaches us both through the head and the emotions. Maybe this is why politically correct authoritarians are always chiding us `not to be sentimental' since emotions are something these control freaks can't orchestrate!
Whatever one's views about the political sympathies of Sacco and Vanzetti, this film shows that they were victims of the hysterical climate of the times and place in which they found themselves, and their plight is represented with great humanism, empathy and power, helped in no small measure by the superb musical score of Ennio Morricone, which must rank as one of his very best. Montaldo's whole technique is thoroughly cinematic, and the acting and all technical credits are faultless.
One somewhat disturbing aspect of this film however, was when I saw it in the USA, Sacco in his final speech from the dock declared, `We stand here because we are anarchists', (it struck at the time because I never thought I'd live to see the day that such a piece of dialogue would be delivered in a film distributed by MGM!), but, in its only screening in the UK on BBC television, this line was changed to `We stand here because we are radicals'. Hmmm! Not quite the same thing. On two other occasions I have noticed `creative subtitling' on French speaking movies, so maybe we should start a campaign for accurate and faithful subtitles!
A brilliant film, in my all-time top 100, so when is anyone going to issue it on video?
- Dave Godin
- Oct 18, 1999