Word: andreas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...actor, Germi creditably plays Andrea-a rough-handed father, a celebrated drinker and singer of songs at his favorite café, and a hell of an engineer. But at 50, Andrea's self-centered world begins to go off the track. His grown son is a layabout who seems more interested in petty rackets than honest work. His daughter (Sylva Koscina), already embittered at having been forced to marry the store clerk who seduced her, has a stillborn child. While Andrea is brooding about that misfortune his train runs down a suicide. Afterward, the engineer takes a few drinks...
Miraculously, from this carload of sentimental clichés Germi weaves a compassionate, richly detailed reminiscence of the commonplace tragedies that every generation endures. The best of the film is seen through the eyes of Andrea's ebullient small son Sandrino (Edoardo Nevola), a lad who must learn to live among fallen idols. The boy's tongue-tied despair is eloquent when he comes upon his married sister in a parked car arguing with a stranger. So is his quiet exultation when he accompanies his father to the wineshop where former friends awkwardly welcome him back...
...Gulf Coast town of Naples, a previously convicted white moonshiner named Thomas D'Andrea was tried last month for systematically cutting telephone lines to steal the copper wire. By all the evidence, each of D'Andrea's six jurors met the legal requirements: they were local citizens who had no felony convictions and were registered voters. They were also, as it happened, all Negroes, and D'Andrea thereupon wound up with what was reportedly the first all-Negro jury to try a white man in Florida...
...more surprised at D'Andrea's acquittal than Foreman Williams, who later insisted that all six jurors had decided on guilt, even though "some of the men said if we found this white man guilty, the judge would turn him loose, and he would come looking for us." Added Williams: "I can't read or write. I believe I was tricked to sign the wrong paper." Two other jurors agreed with Williams' analysis, but the remaining three swore that they thought all six had voted for innocence. To compound the confusion, three jurors were illiterate...
Since a Florida D.A. cannot appeal in such cases, all the prosecution can do now is try to get the verdict expunged on the ground that a six-man jury must be unanimous. Then, if Judge Smith can resolve the issue of possible double jeopardy, D'Andrea may be retried. Ironically, illiteracy is unlikely to be an issue. Had the foreman signed the guilty slip in the same mistaken manner, D'Andrea could have raised that issue as a denial of fair trial. For the mo ment, though, he is delighted with the verdict of his illiterate peers...