Terra Trema, La (1948)

Universalia Film

Director: Luchino Visconti

Starring: “Sicilian Fishermen”

Honors:

Special International Prize at Venice Film Festival

This Communist Party produced picture that struggles with the style and pacing of its intentions is actually quiet the masterpiece work of Italian cinema, praised for with melancholy tones, neorealism, and place in Italian motion picture history. Produced in the wake of Italy’s political realm following the conclusion of World War II, it was commissioned to be a propaganda piece that director Luchino Visconti would take in his own inspired direction. Focusing on the exploitation of the working class, this film exhibits a political message of social injustice, but without propelling a solution down the throats of audiences. It is a slow film about a niche culture, but had much to say on its way to becoming one of the Italy’s finest works of neorealism.

La Terra Trema (translated to “The Earth Trembles”) is a drama about a Sicilian fisherman who attempts to break through the social class norms which he feels rewards greed and exploits his trade. Set in a small fishing village on the Sicilian coast where a large division of men spend their lives collecting fish nightly for the paltry pay from trade merchants who resell their catches for greater profits. One younger fisherman, Ntoni (Antonio Arcidiacono), recognizes how his people are being exploited by doing all the dangerous, hard work for a price that barely affords them what they need, while the merchants reap the vast compensation. Failing to stir up an uprising from his fellow fishermen, Ntoni and his brother Cola (Giuseppe Arcidiacono) gather all their resources to fund a new venture to cut out the wholesalers in hope of greater reparation on their work. The venture tragically fails due to damages to their boat during a great storm, ruining his business and his family as a result. Broke and desperate Ntoni has to beg for work on a fishing boat for the merchants at a humble fraction of his previous wages to fund what he can for his now poorer family, much to the delight of the boastful merchants.

This sad tale is shared in a neorealistic manner that is part documentary in style and part fiction to help share the message director Luchino Visconti wishes to convey. Beautifully shot in black and white in the small fishing village that inspired the story, the picture delivers a realism with its authentic setting, authentic cast compiled of locals, and a story that was to speak to a world in a moment of crossroads. With scenes of long, drawn out shots to manifest how these people lived and worked in this small village is delivered the style that mimics a documentary, the film can feel disjointed at times, especially for more modern audiences use to faster paced stories. One cannot help but be at awe at a number of absolutely beautifully composed shots in this tragic tale of promise leading to lose and failure. As a very gloomy picture it serves as a form of cinematic poetry that shares how even those that do all they can for the right reasons can still fall, be humbled, and receive no reward in the end, a premium example of neorealism.

What began as a project commissioned by the Italian Communist Party as a documentary about fishermen to be used as propaganda for an upcoming election, Visconti manipulated it’s production into a loose adaption of the novel “I Malavoglia,” which he bought the rights in the earlier years of WWII. With time the story evolved as Visconti’s vision and message developed and funding found a way to dry up, making the picture into what we see today.

In researching his idea of his original adaption idea Visconti visited the small community that inspired the novel, falling in love with the setting and its people, which had changed very little in since the late 1800s when the novel was written. Visconti idea grew envisioning La Terra Trema to be the first of a trilogy of pictures to share his thoughts on how Italian society was effected following World War II, but as this film fleshed out, absorbing some of the ideas of the other two proposed movie ideas the two subsequent films ideas were cast away in favor of one superior feature.

This would inspire the filmmaker to focus of this unique culture that he found striking, focusing on sharing the tale of exploitation by the greedy that would appease his initial Communist message. Even though the Communist Party funding fell short, only partially financing the picture, Visconti’s dedication to his vision led him to find desperate means to finance the rest of his picture, tacking out personal loans and mortgaging his own home to raise the film’s budget. In altering his story, Visconti wanted to capture the authentic nature of this setting, deciding to cast his entire movie with local amateurs, delivering performances that would be more natural to the people and setting which he set out to recreate.

The documentary picture idea had long been scrapped by the filmmaker, but with his new ideas of the setting and its people as the actors he would at times capture moments still in a similarly documentary fashion. These moments were of normal everyday events in the small fishing village, whether it was the boats going out to or returning from the sea, or the everyday actions of the villagers, these moments hang in the ether of the film in a small, peculiarly handsome fashion. If I could compare it to anything it would be 2001: A Space Odyssey where the slow and seemingly mundane things these people do are played out in full, providing with it its own sense of beauty with minimal cutting in these captured moments.

The Sicilian village of Aci Trezza was taken over by the production of this picture. In a way the town is a character into itself, and it is beautiful how Visconti is able to capture is old, weather beaten look in the film with the very people that lived there and helped make it run. Perhaps the most impressive shots in the picture are in the scenes where the fishermen revolt against the merchants, turning the entire waterfront of the village into the vast swarm of people fighting on the beach while hundreds more look on, all moving in great action creating a sense of a minor revolution in what is normally a humble fishing community. Also captured in the celluloid are the haunting images of women standing on the shores in silhouette with shawls whipping in the wind as that desperately wait for their men to return from a violent day of storming in the sea.

These were authentic locals playing the roles of every character in the picture. Some suffer from the obvious stiff and unnatural acting, but for the most part what we see is quite impressive from an ensemble of amateur actors, entirely uncredited, listed as only “Sicilian Fishermen.” Antonio Arcidiacono carries the picture as Ntoni, a poor fisherman who attempts to start a revolt, sharing new ideas, experiencing great lose, and ultimate becoming a humbled fraction of a man he once was. His performance greatly outshine his real life brother, Giuseppe, who portrays Cola. Despite his character going through a great deal in the picture, Giuseppe’s performance is much dull when you compare it to his older brother’s, barely getting out some of his lines in his seemingly monotone voice. He is not terrible, especially for an entirely amateur performance. However, Antonio had something special that Visconti got out of him in this, his only acting role.

La Terra Trema was and has been a vastly well receive picture in the Italian film community. In 1948 it would compete in the Venice Film Festival, earning a special award for that year’s presentation, The International Prize, not to be confused with the award for best international picture, or the best film of the festival, which went to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet that year. The film continues to receive high praise as a neorealistic classic Italian film. For modern audiences, especially from the states, La Terra Trema would not be a picture many go out seeking. However the film is a beautiful example of European cinema, which I continue to say at this time was far more in touch with humanism and dramatically tragic tales of life. The film does not provide a reward to its main character, but for the world of cinema this film is a hauntingly beautiful reward from the past.