Bandits of Orgosolo | movie | 1961 | Official Featurette - video Dailymotion

A Sardinian peasant is implicated in the murder of a policeman and, although innocent, he doesn’t give himself up, lac | dG1fZzFjVXFQbkd3QTA

Transcript

00:00The Bandit of Orgozolo is Vittorio De Sitta's first fiction film, or maybe I should not

00:09call this a fiction film, because it is still a documentary. It is a film made in the same

00:15location as some of his earlier documentaries, including Un giorno in Barbagia and Pastori

00:22di Orgozolo, and is acted by the shepherds entirely. Very few scenes in the film have

00:29music, which adds to the sense of authenticity and strong realism of the film. The film is

00:36about Michele, a shepherd, who returns to his sheepfold to discover two bandits are

00:41hiding there, one of them badly wounded. And because he refuses to side with the law, he

00:47becomes suspected of being an accomplice to an incident which causes the death of a policeman.

00:57So he's accused of this murder and it's about, he's escaped through the landscape in Orgozolo,

01:04going up the mountain, coming down and going to the town and fleeing again. And this is

01:11about a man in search for redemption, for any chance that could clear his name. But

01:19every step introduces another catastrophe into his life. So basically it's a film about

01:26how all the doors are closing on him and how the brutality of the landscape becomes a reflection

01:35of the tortured soul that this shepherd is and the impossibility of redeeming himself.

01:43So eventually the film ends with him embracing the life as a bandit.

01:49This was a groundbreaking moment for Italian cinema. It won the best film prize at Venice

01:56Film Festival for the first film, first feature. But it also kind of revitalised Neorealism

02:03in a way. By the early 60s, many masters of Neorealism had gone in completely opposite

02:11directions of each other and of the movement. Realism and reality and the lives of the ordinary

02:18people was not the main concern anymore. Italy was a prosperous country compared to the post-war

02:25period and these directors were busy making more personal and perhaps more popular types

02:34of films. And here it is, this director from the south of Italy, this documentary filmmaker

02:41comes with a film about shepherds and every bit of it felt real and authentic. Along with

02:53other directors who emerged in the 60s like the Taviani brothers, also Ermano Olmi. This

03:00is the second act for Neorealism because directors like Taviani brothers and Vittorio De Setta

03:08realised that actually reality was still Italian cinema's strongest asset, that it was not

03:16fully explored, that there was a lot more to examine from a realist point of view. And

03:25The Bandit of Orgo Solo was produced in that context. Of course when you look at the film

03:33it's very clear that many of the scenes are carefully staged and when you listen to the

03:39film, the main character Michele, if you listen carefully his voice is actually dubbed by John

03:47Mario Valente and you don't expect to hear John Mario Valente's voice on a shepherd from the south.

03:53Don't go away from the sheep. Keep your eyes open, understand? If I don't come back tomorrow,

04:00you'll make them graze around here. But you do. So realism is very, very relative. But if you look

04:07at the overall experience, the feelings that the film leaves you with, it's perhaps richer,

04:14more devastating and more powerful than many of the films made during the first wave of

04:23Neorealism after the Second World War.