BANDITI A ORGOSOLO (98’)
by Vittorio De Seta
cast: non-professional actors
Italy, 1961
Restoration curated by The Film Foundation and Cineteca di Bologna
Introduced by Marco Bertozzi
Screening in the original language
“I vividly remember seeing Banditi at the New York Film Festival in the early 1960s. It was one of the most unusual and extraordinary films I had ever seen. It’s a simple story: a shepherd, unjustly accused of a crime, is chased through an arid and silent landscape. His sheep starve, and destitute, he is forced to become a bandit. The story, however, is also the story of an island and its people. Set on the mountains of Barbagia, in Sardinia, the film reveals an archaic world, unspoiled by society. Its people speak an ancient dialect and live according to prehistoric laws. They see the modern world as foreign and hostile. In them, De Seta found the vestiges of an old society through which a nobility shone through. I remember being impressed by the style of the film. Neorealism had been taken to another level, where the director’s participation in his narrative was so total that the line between form and content was obliterated and the events dictated the form. De Seta’s sense of rhythm, his use of the camera, his extraordinary ability to merge his characters to their environment was a complete revelation. It was as if De Seta were an anthropologist who spoke with the voice of a poet.” (Martin Scorsese)
