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The Italian unification from Messina to Volturno, the past made flesh by Roberto Rossellini in a commemorative mood. Il Tricolore flaps behind the credits and then over a map of fragmented states circa 1860, a orchestral preamble concluding with a skirmish against an electric cobalt sky. Garibaldi (Renzo Ricci) is middle-aged, ginger-bearded, rheumatic, serenely determined, squatting by the meadow to savor some bread before battle: "Anybody have any salt?" As the Redshirts charge uphill, the camera takes a paradoxically distant and urgent view of clashing brigades and puffs of gunsmoke dotting the landscape—a cosmic vantage of long shots. A sprawling pan right outlines the Calabrese coast and a reverse zoom reveals the regiment stationed on the opposite beachfront, then a pan left to follow an officer into town and a tilt up to the top of a tower, one take. Roundups and clandestine meetings introduce a whiff of derring-do, a shepherdess (Giovanna Ralli) sacrifices herself and is eulogized like the Sicilian peasant in Paisà, a trampled body under the steamroller of history. A burro ride down winding roads by ancient ruins, an euphoric victory in a Palermo plaza accompanied by Tina Louise ("una giornalista francesa") and Alexandre Dumas ("caro amigo!"). Carlo Bossoli and Francesco Hayez, plus Renoir's La Marseillaise as King Francesco II (Raimondo Croce) ponders the situation and steps down, "let us put on a good face." The quest of Risorgimento, a view of reconstruction from a director who witnessed the nation's fall. The coda adduces a note of Fordian sorrow, with Garibaldi placed on reserve by the Piedmontese army and ruminating from the back of a departing boat like Rossellini himself at the mercy of dull critics. A rousing national epic in Eastman color, a bedrock formation for later portraits of monarchs and apostles and messiahs. With Paolo Stoppa, Franco Interlenghi, Leone Botta, and Giovanni Petti.
--- Fernando F. Croce |