Gillo Pontecorvo’s first film is almost a remake of Visconti’s La Terra Trema in its focus on an Italian fishing village, except it’s in widescreen color and stars a young and magnetic Yves Montand, along with Alida Valli, so it’s more melodrama than neorealism. (So Battle of Algiers must have been a later return to roots, with nonprofessional actors and jagged immediacy.) Despite the gloss, the moral of the story is the similar to Visconti’s Communist-produced epic. Montand is a go-it-alone, entrepreneurial sort, who fishes only with his two young sons, using dynamite to stun the catch, and shuns the co-operative which fishes together with nets. You know it’s not going to end well for him, even if he is ultimately a good father and honorable man. Play with capitalism and it will blow up in your face. The Dalmatian coastal waters, running through rocky coves and islands, are the beautifully-shot title character of the film. (1957, TCM/T, n.) *6*
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