Salvatore Giuliano

I didn’t really get this film when I saw it at MoMA thirty-odd years ago, and I still don’t. Francesco Rosi’s neo-neorealist reconstruction of the death and deeds of a Sicilian bandit leader in the years just after WWII is meticulous but incomprehensible. Shot in operatic black & white, on the actual sites of the events, with actual townpeople in all but two of the roles, the film uses time-fractured editing to depict a complicated tale of conspiracy and double-cross in postwar chaos, among the bandits, separatist politicians, and the Mafia. It’s like watching JFK if you had no antecedent knowledge of the facts of the case, though Rosi is an unturned Stone when it comes to wild speculation. Still, there’s something there about controlling insurgencies in the Mediterranean world, from Algiers to Baghdad, that comes through in this beautifully-presented Criterion Collection dvd. (1961, dvd, n.) *5+*