Friday, 5/16/97 Ongoing retrospective series spotlights
lesser-known Italian filmmaker FILM Though relatively unknown, Rosi
produced formidable body of work
By John Nein Daily Bruin Contributor Finding a great film
director in late ’50s Italy was about as hard as finding a cafe in
Rome. Auteur filmmakers were growing on olive trees. Why there was
such an abundance is a matter for historians, but it was
indisputably the dawn of a new generation of filmmakers, heirs to
neo-realism, and innovators that would change the character and
style of film forever: Fellini, Antonioni, Passolini, Bertolucci,
Rosi. And while Rosi’s films may not be as well known to audiences
as those of his contemporaries, they constitute an enduring body of
work – testament to his prolific imagination and unceasing social
vigilance. The "Illustrious Corpses of Francesco Rosi," an ongoing
film retrospective presented by Cinecitta and the UCLA Film and
Television Archive takes its title both from Rosi’s
uncharacteristically abstract 1976 work "Illustrious Corpses" and
from the fact that people tend to die (somewhat unceremoniously) in
quite a few of his films. But in Rosi’s world, when somebody dies,
it’s a safe wager that there’s something wrong with society, and
he’s going to find out what it is. Rosi, a Neopolitan who began his
film career as an assistant to Luchino Visconti and briefly
Antonioni, directed his first film called "The Challenge" in 1958
at the age of 35. The still image of Rosi mounted on posters for
the series shows a stern-faced man in glasses smoking a cigar with
all the fury of Sam Fuller. It’s the image of a workhorse who has
outlasted those same contemporaries and continues to make films
today. Rosi appeared at last week’s screening of his 1962
masterpiece, "Salvatore Giuliano," about the rise of the Sicilian
Mafia in postwar Italy. The series continues Saturday with his 1965
"The Moment of Truth," the brutal story, set during the Franco
regime, of a young man who leaves the Spanish countryside to become
a matador, and Rosi’s tragic rendering of the absurdity and mass
slaughter that was Italy’s involvement in the first World War. To
Rosi, however, the conflict was not merely one of rival armies, but
of rival classes within the warring nations. Also screening in the
series is "The Mattei Affair," a thriller about the international
oil business which won the 1972 Palme d’Or at Cannes, "The
Chronicle of a Death Foretold," Rosi’s critically acclaimed film
adaptation of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel which looks at the
loyalties and codes of honor in a small town in Latin America 20
years after the curious murder of a man who everybody knew as
"Lucky Luciano," once again returning to the Mafia genre in
following a gangsters rise and fall from power in America and
Sicily. Toward the end of May, the festival will show "Christ
Stopped at Eboli," a film about a writer banished to a remote
village after he opposed the fascist invasion of Ethiopia, "Three
Brothers," in which a father and his sons reunite on the occasion
of the mother’s death, "Carmen," his somewhat ill-received but
beautiful rendering of the Bizet opera, and "More than a Miracle,"
the 1967 film, starring Omar Sharif and Sophia Loren, based on
17th-century Neapolitan folktales but dealing with familiar Rosi
issues of class and culture in Southern Italy. For a man whose name
has yet to qualify as a household word in this country, Rosi has
not only a formidable collection of films to his name, but the
almost undying praise of a whole handful of critics and festivals
over time. Perhaps his story is that of the composer or painter who
must wait for time to ‘rediscover’ his talent. The 15 films
screening in the series are, above all, illustrative of the type of
vitality which emerged in cinema all across the world at the time.
With a style that mimicked documentaries, use of real locations and
often non-professional actors, and his remarkably unsentimental,
perhaps even overwhelmingly harsh depiction of the lives of his
characters, Rosi’s great accomplishment was to create beautiful
films with sharp edges that capture the intimacy of character
relations but do so within social contexts defined by power,
violence, politics, economics and the family. FILM: For more
information on the series or to hear the schedule for upcoming
films, call 206-FILM. UCLA Film and Television Archive "Three
Brothers" is one of the movies featured in the "Illustrious Corpses
of Francesco Rosi" film retrospective. UCLA Film and Television
Archive "Carmen" will be one of the films featured in the Rosi
retrospective.