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The lone seagull and the flock, "una gran giornata per pescare." In the fishing town controlled by the wholesaler with a fridge, the independent operator is the rugged paterfamilias (Yves Montand) who favors explosives over nets. His young sons help out aboard a little boat named Speranza, "the finest crew in the Mediterranean," back on land wait the pregnant wife (Alida Valli) and the teen daughter (Federica Ranchi) who's unlucky in love. The local maresciallo is a friendly rival defeated by a tragic accident, his replacement is a coastal ramrod (Peter Carsten) determined to snatch the dynamiting outcast. An unforgiving market, an outlaw approach: "With you it's like walking into a bank to blow up the safe!" The island community is torn between criticism of the protagonist's destructive technique and admiration for his muscular individualism, so is Gillo Pontecorvo in his hardy, stirring feature debut. Ocean, sky, the tentative Marxist path for the title, "la cooperativa" organized by a fellow peasant (Francisco Rabal) points up the solution for the land of men "neither rich nor in jail." (A new radio squeaking in German and a motorized engine are among the technological advancements, the ship that defiantly outpaces the authorities soon finds itself at the bottom of a cove.) Visconti's fishermen, naturally, also Hitchcock's (The Manxman) along with a hint of Dassin's Thieves' Highway. Adroit underwater filming spiked by a splash of red, color cinematography (disparaged by the novice director) that starts out like a postcard but fades marvelously into Marieschi tones. "Each one adapts as he can," a rueful mind at the close is a hammer on a live artillery shell (cf. The Small Back Room). With Umberto Spadaro, Terence Hill, Giancarlo Soblone, and Ronaldo Bonacchi.
--- Fernando F. Croce |