Word: montaldo
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...only film industry which seems to have overcome its skittishness over politics is the Italian. Bellochio, Petri, Pontecorvo, Bertolucci have all made films which transform tough social criticism, by passion and human perception, into art. Even Italian hacks, like Montaldo of Sacco and Vanzetti fame, are hacks on a higher plane. If American film is to mature, its maturity will come from those able to confront Kramer's value system and erase its sigma from socially-conscious flimmaking. As Robert Steel said (in New American Review...
...makes the failure of the film all the more disconcerting is that Sacco and Vanzetti deserved so much better. Anyone who reads the transcript of the trial cannot fail to be struck by the purity of motive (particularly in the case of Vanzetti) that inspired their anarchist belief. If Montaldo had been less carried away by his own enthusiasms, if he had been content to let the critical moments (Vanzetti's last speech at the trial, the execution sequence) stand by themselves, the film would have succeeded, if only on the strength of the appeal of the historical characters themselves...
...Montaldo is generally faithful to historical documentation. But toward the end of the film, he makes one unforgiveable addition that undermines the entire thrust of his argument. He invents a scene between Vanzetti and Massachusetts Governor Fuller in which the convicted anarchist is asked to justify his request for a reprieve from the electric chair. During the course of their conversation, Fuller reveals that it is ultimately a political consideration--beyond any question of guilt or innocence--that makes it impossible to grant Vanzetti's request. Vanzetti is an anarchist; anarchists cannot be tolerated; Vanzetti must die. At this point...
This 'correction' of historical fact amounts to an admission that accuracy would not possess sufficient emotional value. And this is patently absurd. There is absolutely no dramatic reason to reach beyond history. But Montaldo seems unsure of the clarity of his position, and thus tacks on this utterly superfluous moral summation...
...Finally, Montaldo succumbs to sentimentalism. He mistakes the particular historical event for a general moral principle. He wrongly assumes the necessity of 'proving' the anarchists' innocence and the conspiracy of the government in order to substantiate his charges. What Montaldo does not realize is that it finally does not matter whether the legal tactics in the trial were unethical or whether or not there was a conspiracy. In the end it dose not current matter whether Sacco 'Vanzetti were, in fact, guilty or innocent. No matter what the reality behind that trial, the crimes of the American government are beyond...