Citizen Rosi: The Films of Francesco Rosi. "To Forget Palermo (Dimenticare Palermo)". Screening
Like all the great modern Italian directors, Francesco Rosi has roots in neorealism; he apprenticed with, most famously, Luchino Visconti on La terra trema as well as on Bellissima and Senso, which he cowrote. Yet Rosi is like no other director. An artist with a passionate commitment to truth, he is never for a moment fooled into thinking he has found it. Rosi constructs his films, mostly thrillers and political exposés, as dramatic inquiries, frequently into real situations, always into real social forces—the forces of corruption. Born in 1922 in Naples, he is a man of the South whose character was shaped by the unholy alliances that prevail there and the dichotomies of power they perpetuate. And this is how character is shaped in his films, from a vendor who gainsays the mob to the Sicilian bandit/guerilla Salvatore Giuliano who challenges all Italy; from the politics of poverty in Christ Stopped at Eboli to the poverty of politics in Three Brothers.
A committed leftist and an equally committed modernist, Francesco Rosi offers a body of films whose political and emotional impact is almost purely visual. Two great cinematographers—Gianni Di Venanzo for the black-and-white films and Pasqualino De Santis for the films in color—are his important collaborators. Pauline Kael wrote, “Rosi has one of the greatest compositional senses in the history of movies. . . . We’re led by the camera, and we trust its movement. Something more is always going to be revealed. Rosi is discovering life.”
Rosi’s first English-language film explores the long arm of the Mafia in a political thriller that starts in New York, then moves to Sicily for an impressionistic, sensual tour of the crumbling magnificence that is Palermo. James Belushi stars as an ambitious New York mayoral candidate, Carmine Bonavia, who hits upon legalization of drugs as a winning ticket until the Mafia in Sicily subtly but unmistakably hits on him. Distanced from his Sicilian roots, Carmine and his photojournalist bride (Rogers) honeymoon in the homeland he has never seen. There they encounter the mysteries and miseries of a culture both foreign and familiar, beautifully captured by Pasqualino De Santis’ cinematography to bring visual reference to the whole of Rosi’s work. A waltzing camera in a ball sequence is an homage to Visconti’s The Leopard. But the honeymoon is clearly over for Italy in this film that decries a culture of violence nourished by the politics of drugs and neglect.
General admission: $12
BAM Cinema Club Members: $7
Movie Moguls: Free
Other screenings
6:50, 9:15pm
