MAY 27-JUNE 10

Born in Naples in 1922, Francesco Rosi is the creator of one of the most cogent, committed, confrontational and controversial bodies of work in recent cinema. He is also, in the opinion of some, one of world cinema’s most underrated major talents.

The critic David Thomson, in the latest edition of his esteemed The Biographical Dictionary of Film, concludes this of Rosi: “There are not many masters as little known outside their own countries.”

The point is arguable, for Rosi’s work has hardly gone unnoticed or unheralded, certainly not in Europe at least: a Silver Bear (Best Director) at Berlin for Salvatore Giuliano (1961), the Golden Lion (Best Film) at Venice for Hands Over the City (1963), and a Palme d’Or (Best Film) at Cannes for The Mattei Affair (1972). The French critic Michel Ciment, still a prominent champion of Rosi's work, once described him as “one of the three last giants of the Italian cinema, along with his elders Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni.” In the words of two of his most avid American proponents, Rosi is “one of the great modern directors" (Pauline Kael) and has “one of the master film styles of our day” (David Denby).   

Rosi began his career in the cinema as an assistant to Visconti; he also worked with Antonioni, Monicelli and others.  His highly accomplished early features, The Challenge (1958) and The Swindlers (1959), reveal two important streams of influence on Rosi’s aesthetic: Italian neorealism — in particular, the operatic neorealism of his mentor Visconti — and the classic American crime film. It was with Salvatore Giuliano, his third feature, that Rosi truly hit his stride and established his own distinctive and highly influential style. 

A dossier-like dramatic investigation into the 1950 assassination of the legendary Sicilian bandit of the title, Salvatore Giuliano was a richly journalistic, politically engaged, sophisticated work in a semi-documentary style, distinguished by a rigorous compilation of information, and by a complex, elliptical narrative structure. Shot on location with a largely non-professional cast, it was hailed as an exciting revitalization and “extension of the neorealist heritage” — and as “the most important Italian film of the early Sixties” (Georges Sadoul).

In subsequent films, Rosi would continue to hone this investigative, scrupulously fact-based, neorealism-meets-modernism aesthetic, a style described by the director himself as “not a documentary way of making films” — Rosi's films are not documentaries! — “but a documented way.” Powerful works such as Hands Over the City and The Mattei Affair built on the achievement of Salvatore Giuliano and “gave rise to a new genre, the so-called ‘political’ film of the late 1960s and 1970s, many of which incorporated Rosi's investigative techniques” (Peter Bondanella).  

These films also continued the inflammatory, exposé style of Salvatore Giuliano, and saw Rosi taking on corruption and abuse of power in the Italian establishment and its institutions: church, state, industry, the military. In the process, he frequently documented — and attacked — collusion between political and government officials and the Mafia. Veritable “legal briefs against the system” (Bondanella), Rosi’s films have been described, aptly enough, as “tales of corruption, complicity and death” (Verina Glaessner). They are also important precursors of The Godfather films of Francis Ford Coppola. 

What is so remarkable about Rosi's films, and so intellectually and aesthetically satisfying, is that, despite their strong (leftist) political commitment, their challenge to the status quo, and their revelations of conspiracies and collusion, they refuse to offer pat, Oliver Stone/JFK-like solutions to the mysteries and mendacity they uncover. “The strength of Rosi’s films . . . is that they weave an intricate path between representation and fiction, between the imagined and the actual, the aesthetic and the documentary . . . various events are viewed and presented from several aspects, leaving any final resolution and understanding, if they exist, to the spectator” (Ted Perry).

Critics have discerned two key strains of evolution in Rosi’s work over the years: a move towards an even more boldly stylish aesthetic (see, for instance, 1976’s Illustrious Corpses), and, in later works,  a move from the epic to the more intimate, from the political to the more personal (1981’s Three Brothers is perhaps the benchmark here). 

Rosi, who turned 87 in November, hasn’t directed a film since 1997’s The Truce, but is said to have stayed active by directing for the stage. He was awarded a Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival. He was the previously the  recipient of the Akira Kurosawa Award, given each year to one of the masters of world cinema, at the 1997 San Francisco International Film Festival. He is a six-time winner of Italy’s David di Donatello Award (the country’s Oscar) for Best Director.  

This retrospective, organized in conjunction with Cinecittà Luce (Rome) and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura (Vancouver) celebrates the extraordinary achievements of one of Italy’s most important filmmakers.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: For their support and assistance in making this exhibition possible, Pacific Cinémathèque gratefully acknowledges Cinecittà Luce (Rome) and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura (Vancouver).