Word: montaldo
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Dates: during 1971-1971
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...Sacco-Vanzetti affair should have been a natural. History provided everything--racism, repression, corruption in high places, the execution of innocents. Given the least bit of subtlety and finesse, a contemporary retelling of the episode could have been both popular and politically apt. As it is, Giuliano Montaldo has directed a sloppy and sentimentalized muddle of a film...
Sacco and Vanzetti is mired in good intentions. And though Montaldo's heart is in the rights place, his camera is not. Narratively, the film is a botch; it wanders and is tedious. Montaldo's boundless sympathy for the anarchist pair erodes his intellectual discipline, and the painstaking journey through the seven-year ordeal is finally not worth the effort...
...they are credible and pathetic-good, bewildered souls whom history has scorched by its proximity. As they watch themselves railroaded to the electric chair, they shout in anger, then grow numb, and finally reach a plane of philosophy that forgives their executioners and redeems their adopted country. Director Giuliano Montaldo reconstructs the trial as if it were a kangaroo court and treats the men like innocents. This version makes dramatic sense, but it is, unfortunately, at odds with the truth. In a painstakingly researched book, Tragedy in Dedham, Francis Russell proved nine years ago that Nicola Sacco was indeed implicated...