The overarching agenda of neo-realist filmmaker Francesco Rosi was to portray the life of Italy, to examine the forces at work in the nation and to prompt a debate of ideologies. When watching any of the films of his canon the audience may witness the development of Italy's history from the beginning of World War 1 to the economic and political climate of the Sixties and Seventies. His work confronts topics such as fascism in a Lucanian village circa 1930s. the liberation of Italy, banditry in Sicily, provincial politics in Naples, the oil crisis and the Cosa Nostra.
Rosi was born in Naples in 1922 and a number of his films center on the oppressiveness of southern Italy- he exploits Italy's divide and the manner in which the affluent North views the Southern half of the country as a veritable part of the Third World. But far from being from the perspective of any such local yokel - Rosi's work illuminates one of the basic problems of modern time, the growing gap between the underdeveloped countries and the technologically advanced ones.
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| One of the shyster salesman from Rosi'a unsung I Magliari |
For several years he worked as an assistant to both Visconti and Michaelangelo Antonioni. His first two films as director was 1958's La Sfida, about the hold of the Neapolitan Mafia over the fruit business and The Swindlers, 1959 which concerned the spurious double dealings of select southern Italian salesman in Hamburg.
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| Mattei finish. |
The story of the investigation into the death of the infamous Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano (1961) is a dazzling mosaic that probes the complexities of Italia's political system and shows the various powers of the police, the army, the Mafia and the law. It is far from being the biography of a historical character, and contrary to many a 'political' film, it has no real message. Rosi fails to draw conclusions, but expertly juxtaposes points of view.
Disparate in structure, but employing the same methods are the largely biographical Il Caso Mattei (The Mattei Affair,1972) and the subsequent Lucky Luciano (1973). The former begins with the death in a plane crash and begs the question was this indeed an accident or was it frankly murder of the petroleum tycoon Enrico Mattei. If The Mattei Affair portrays the excitement and rhetoric of the business and political world, Lucky Luciano, which focuses on the Mafia is a film of silence and obscurity where everything is implied but never actually stated.