'Salvatore Giuliano' blends documentary realism with dramatic storytelling

"Salvatore Giuliano" is a 1962 Italian crime drama directed by Francesco Rosi that dramatizes the real-life events surrounding the life and death of the legendary Sicilian bandit and folk hero.

Giuliano rose to notoriety after the liberation of Sicily from fascist control in 1943, when he formed a gang that joined a separatist army. When the army dissolved, he and his gang intensified their outlaw activities. One of their most significant crimes was the Portella della Ginestra incident, during which dozens of men, women, and children were killed or wounded. This act prompted the authorities to launch an all-out war against Giuliano. His defenses slowly crumbled, and on July 5, 1959, his body was discovered in the courtyard of a house in Castelvetrano. That moment serves as the starting point for Rosi's film.

Giuliano's fame is tied to his involvement in the Sicilian independence movement and his battles against both the Italian government and the Mafia in the 1940s and early 1950s. His life was fraught with controversy, with some viewing him as a symbol of resistance and others considering him a criminal.

Starring Pietro Cammarata in the title role, Rosi's film was shot in Giuliano's birthplace of Montelepre, Sicily, and tracks his political activities, which he perceived as social activism, and the violence that accompanied that mission. The film is a blend of documentary-style narration with a dramatized retelling of Giuliano's life, focusing on the social and political context of Sicily during and after World War II.

The story is told from multiple perspectives, including those of Sicilian peasants, the Mafia and the government, offering a complex view of the events surrounding Giuliano's rise and eventual death. Rosi effectively conveys the extreme violence of the time and the pain experienced by the victims' relatives, who are left to pick up the pieces. It's difficult to watch elderly women pleading for the lives of their family members. The execution scenes are filmed in a way that creates a sense of watching real-time events, making the film unsuitable for the faint of heart. 

Nevertheless, it is a masterpiece that impacted future directors around the world. When the film was released, Mario Soldati, a film critic for Il Giorno, wrote, "In my opinion, no director has ever succeeded in re-creating reality with such accuracy, with such power." He described the film as "a historic and critical film, which is lyric in the force of its images."

A film that solidified Rosi's reputation, "Salvatore Giuliano" is above all a documentary-style portrayal. Its highly dramatic narrative was nevertheless built on a solid foundation of facts, including reports by the Italian police, accounts from special correspondents of major newspapers, and court records. According to the esteemed cinema journalist Gian Luigi Rondi, personal interpretations were kept to a minimum, with Rosi preferring to adhere to reports on actual events. This departure from conventional storytelling methods, Rondi believed, lent the film an atmosphere of concrete reality so convincing that viewers might forget its fictional elements, believing it to be an actual documentary.

"Salvatore Giuliano" is available to stream on the Criterion Channel, which also features in-depth commentary about the film and its real-life inspiration, an Italian film news clip about the crimes, and interviews with Rosi discussing his creative decisions regarding how to depict Giuliano.

- Written by Jeannine Guilyard for Fra Noi magazine. Click here to subscribe.