Salvatore Giuliano

Salvatore Giuliano was a charismatic and much mythologised Sicilian bandit but those who come to Francesco Rosi's 1962 film about him looking for biographical information or learning about his adventures and exploits would be in for a serious disappointment. Even though the whole film is about him, Giuliano himself appears in the film only as a corpse! Elsewhere he is always in the shadows. Rosi deliberately leaves out any scope for psychologising or individual myth making. His concerns are far removed from that. He knows that it is not individuals and their inner life that count in modern-day politics but rather the complex and ever-shifting web of ties, affiliations and allegiances and it is these that his investigative camera tries to explore and unravel.

The film mostly skips the early life and career of Giuliano as a famed Outlaw and Sicilian separatist. It was only after his involvement in the massacre of group of peasants and workers participating in May day celebration at Porta Della Ginestra that the authorities really tried hard to get him. According to Rosi the police made his deputy kill him after persuading him that he will get a pardon from the state but later they not only rescinded on their offer but also denied any involvement. He also hints about a possible cover-up about Giuliano's relations with the members of right wing political party and possible motives behind the massacre, though none of it is spelled very clearly. Like almost all of the Italian filmmakers of his and the earlier generation Rosi was a committed leftist too. Much of the later film takes place in the courthouse, it was all a little too complex to follow. The film's structure itself is quite complex, it jumps back and forth in time with shifting points of view and many different characters.

The film was shot in real location. Many people who lived there and who knew Giuliano acted in the film. Some of them were even the survivors or the witness of the massacre. The reconstruction of the scene was reportedly so authentic that people who were supposed to be acting panicked, destroying some camera equipments in the process. A few words also about the cinematography. Every movie-buff (I mean the apartment-bound types) is familiar with Sicialian landscapes but you haven't really seen it unless you have seen the landscapes as photographed in this film. The cinematographer of the film was the great Gianni Di Venanzo whose filmography includes such classics as Fellini's 8 1/2 and L'Eclisse by Antonioni. The sun-drenched rocky landscape is put to an extremely evocative use. It is even better than The Godfather or L'Avventura.

In short a bit confusing and difficult to follow at times but still a remarkable and often startling work of political filmmaking. Also important since it influenced so many other great films - most significantly perhaps The Battle of Algiers which takes a similarly depersonalized and quasi-documentarian approach to political filmmaking. Good introductory articles from The New York Times and The Guardian