Salvatore Giuliano

OPENING NIGHT: INTRODUCTION BY PAUL GARFINKEL ► “The most important Italian film of the early Sixties” (Georges Sadoul), the influential Salvatore Giuliano was the work that established Rosi as a major new talent and a legitimate heir to the tradition of neorealism. Italian cinema authority Peter Bondanella credits the movie’s investigative, richly journalistic, engaged, semi-documentary style — Rosi’s trademark — with creating “a new genre, the so-called ‘political’ film of the late 1960s and 1970s.” Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian bandit turned Mafia boss who became a significant player in the Sicilian independence movement in the post-WWII period. Rosi uses a complex, elliptical narrative structure to chronicle Giuliano’s life and times, beginning with the discovery of his bullet-ridden body in 1950, then alternating events following his death with flashbacks detailing his rise to prominence. Shot on location in Sicily using a largely non-professional cast, the film earned Rosi the Best Director prize at Berlin in 1962 — and sparked huge controversy in Italy for its exposé of the links between the Mafia and the state. Michael Cimino’s The Sicilian (1987) adapted from the Mario Puzo novel, also told Giuliano’s story. Rosi’s riveting, Rossellini-like achievement “makes most Mafiosi movies seem very superficial” (David Thomson). B&W, 35mm, in Italian with English subtitles. 125 mins.

Paul Garfinkel will provide an introduction to the cinema of Francesco Rosi. Dr. Garfinkel in an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University. His areas of interest include modern Italian history, including legal and social history, and film and history.