Word: vanzettis
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What 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...
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...
...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 dispute. And if evidence should one day appear indicating the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti after all, that would not change one whit the fact of American intolerance...
Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and tried in a period that was shaken by prejudice and distrust. The United States had entered a period of post-war isolationism, and the "Red Raids" ordered by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in 1920 were only the most obvious manifestation of a generally paranoid political climate...
...aliens were rounded up in major American cities and deported en masse to Europe, have been compared to the McCarthy purges of the 1950's or the mass, indiscriminate arrests during the Washington Mayday demonstrations in 1971. Many would contend that the system of justice that convicted Sacco and Vanzetti lives on in the trials of the Rosenbergs, the Chicago Eight and Angela Davis...