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