Every film lover remembers a point when they begin to view cinema as an art form and not just ephemeral entertainment. A turning point for me was the PBS series Film Odyssey, which presented classics from the Janus Collection, hosted by Los Angeles Times’ film critic Charles Champlin in 1971. That marked my first exposure to Ingmar Bergman (Wild Strawberries), Federico Fellini (La Strada), Jean Cocteau (Beauty and the Beast) and Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon), among others. But it was the film history class I took at the University of Georgia in 1974 that really opened my eyes to the possibilities of film as a creative medium. I learned about the auteur theory in that class with screenings of Sam Fuller’s The Steel Helmet and Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life and developed an appreciation for silent cinema (D.W. Griffith’s Orphans of the Storm, Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s Earth) and the virtues of the Studio System (represented by George Sidney’s Scaramouche and Leo McCarey’s An Affair to Remember). What made the biggest impact on me, however, were the Italian neorealism films of the post-WW2 era, especially Luchino Visconti’s La Terra Trema [1948] (The English translation is The Earth Trembles).
This was the director’s second feature film after his 1943 directorial debut with Ossessione, an unauthorized film adaptation of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. Ossessione was promptly banned by the fascist regime in power at the time and the prints were destroyed (Visconti managed to save a duplicate negative which was used to strike future prints). It was this experience coupled with his own observations of fascist injustices and oppression that led him to respond with a critique of how the working class is constantly exploited by those in power. With a screenplay co-written with Antonio Pietrangeli, Visconti ended up spending seven months on location creating this early masterwork with help from assistant directors Francesco Rosi and Franco Zeffirelli, both of whom would go on to become major figures in Italian cinema.
Partially inspired by Giovanni Verga’s 1881 novel I Malavoglia, La Terra Trema was originally conceived as the first part of a trilogy which would focus on the poor fishermen of Aci Trezza, Sicily (Part two would be about the sulphur miners of the region and part three would spotlight farmers as the main subject). At first Visconti intended to shoot the movie as a documentary but then decided to structure the film as a true-to-life portrait with the local villagers of Aci Trezza playing themselves. The result is an epic drama, comparable to a Greek tragedy, which has the emotional sweep of a grand opera but the look and feel of an ethnographic documentary.
At the center of the story is Ntoni (Antonio Arcidiacono), the oldest of seven children and the head of the Valastro family after his father vanishes at sea. His life is an endless ritual of 12-14 hour days at sea, having to rely on favorable weather for his trade as a fisherman. He is also responsible for all of the costs related to maintaining his livelihood but, even then, he has to compete with the other fisherman whose daily catch is subjected to the low pricing of the buyers. While other fishermen complain about their lot in life and their exploitation by the merchants, Ntoni is inspired to break the hopeless cycle, saying to his grandfather: “..We were not born to live a lousy life, to never hope to improve ourselves. We were born to at least be masters of our lives and our families.”
Ntori is able to convince his kin that they can go into business for themselves and make a better living by mortgaging their modest stone cottage. With cash on hand, the Valastro family buy a boat and catch a massive school of anchovies on their first day out. Their personal victory is short-lived, however, when Ntori and his crew return to the sea during bad weather and disappear for days. When they are finally discovered and hauled ashore, their boat is ruined and they have no money for repairs.
The Valastro family soon finds themselves in a downward spiral with no end in sight. Ntori is unable to find any work and begins hanging around with the village derelicts. His sister Lucia (Agnese Giammona) is disgraced and ostracized for having an affair with a male admirer. The grandfather collapses under the financial pressure and is taken to a hospital. Cola (Giuseppe Arcidiacono), Ntori’s brother, leaves the village to work for a possible black market smuggler. Worst of all, the family lose their home and possessions to the bank officials. By the end, Ntori and two younger brothers are forced to take jobs with a former fishing rival and the cycle of exploitation continues.
Despite the fact that La Terra Trema was solicited and funded by the Communist party, Visconti played down the political dogma and propaganda elements and took a more humanistic approach. Most Italian critics praised the movie when it was released (although some Marxists felt that the message had been diluted) and it won the International Award at the Venice Film Festival. Still, it was deemed a financial failure and part of the reason may be due to the fact that the film was in the Sicilian dialect, which was incomprehensible to most Italians. The distributor then had the movie shortened and dubbed into Italian with Visconti adding himself as an unseen narrator who periodically comments on events as they unfold in the movie. None of this really helped the film’s distribution possibilities and Visconti didn’t make another movie for three years, eventually returning to the screen with Belissima (1951), a more conventional soap opera-like drama of a mother (Anna Magnani) trying to get her young daughter discovered as a child actress.
Although La Terra Trema didn’t make its U.S. premiere until 1957, the movie is now considered one of Visconti’s most important works and a Neorealism landmark that continues to move audiences and serve as a call to action against social injustices. Many renowned film critics have championed the movie with some minor reservations such as Pauline Kael who called it “long and full of political cliches, yet in its solemnity and beauty it achieves a true epic vision. The film is lyrical yet austere, and it’s beautifully proportioned.”
The director would later remark, “In La Terra Trema, I was trying to express the whole dramatic theme as a direct outcome of an economic conflict.” What may have started out as an anti-fascist critique with a pro-Marxist slant became something much richer and complex than a message-laden polemic. Yes, La Terra Trema is about the hard-scrabble lives of Sicilian fisherman and how they are treated but it is also about the generational divide between the young and old over their destiny and purpose in life.
In one telling scene, Ntoni is told by his grandfather that “your father worked so hard and never complained” as if that is a virtue. He even tells Ntoni that “the merchants are always right” in regard to their business dealings. Clearly, the older generation believes in accepting their plight as if it is fated and some kind of tradition to be followed without complaint. Ntoni is one of the few voices to question this defeatist acceptance and demand a change.
Visconti’s film is also about social hierarchy in the village and women are at the bottom. Even though most of them have to work for a living, they still must serve as caregivers for the rest of the family while also cooking and cleaning for them. They are also powerless to stop their men from working the sea during bad weather. The scene of the Valastro women waiting anxiously on the rocky shoreline for Ntoni’s missing boat to appear is especially memorable.
Last but not least, La Terra Trema is also fascinating as a portrait of life in Aci Trezza at the time it was filmed. The scenes of the fishermen rising at dawn and paddling out to sea, the stone masons singing folk songs as they go about their work, the cacophony of voices in the marketplace as buyers and suppliers haggle over prices, the scene of the village women salting anchovies for market as a communal event – all of these things make La Terra Trema a remarkable time capsule for future generations. (Today, the village of Aci Trezza is a charming seaside destination for Italians on vacation during the summer and it is slowly being discovered by American and European tourists as well).
It is also worth mentioning the stunning black and white cinematography of Aci Trezza’s volcanic coastline and the local inhabitants by G.R. Aldo, who also filmed Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan (1951) and Umberto D (1952) plus Visconti’s Senso (1954). Some critics have noted that the lyrical and beautifully composed imagery is often at odds with the raw, unadorned nature of the film’s grim storyline but that brings a compelling tension to the mix.
The other major criticism is that the second half of La Terra Trema is so relentlessly downbeat that the movie appears to be confirming a world view of hopelessness and futility. Yet the final image of Ntori returning to work with his brothers is a sign that our main protagonist has moved on from his humiliation and defeat and is back in the game. He has learned that individual action is doomed to failure and only through a collective effort can positive change occur. Sooner or later a social revolution is inevitable.
La Terre Trema has been available in inferior prints on VHS and DVD over the years but the best option is the remastered edition on DVD released by Entertainment One in 2012. It is a stand alone disc offering the original cut of the movie with English subtitles but it would be great to see The Criterion Collection restore and remaster the film for Blu-ray.
Other links of interest:
https://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/TerraTrema.htm
http://www.frenchfilms.org/review/la-terra-trema-1948.html
Cinema Sojourns 