Last-minute angst

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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27 October

My viewing of Lucky Luciano (1973) and Salvatore Giuliano (1962) led to two impressions:

That Francesco Rosi is genuinely ambivalent in the way in which these films are made as to whether they are documenting or glorifying gangsterism, the Mafia and what they got away with - Salvatore, with its meaning of saviour, may not be an unusual name, but, prior to all the photographers and reporters crowding in on the courtyard where he has been killed, there is a sort of respect, and a quasi-judicial process is gone through with a description of the body, how it is positioned and clothed. We start here with the end, whereas we follow Lucky's story back from the States to Italy.

In both cases, all that seemed clear thitherto becomes hopelessly complicated in the last 20 to 30 minutes, and I felt that, although there was something to be understood, there was too much confusion and conflicting detail to do so. Perhaps life is like that, but with the scene of the court at the end of Giuliano, and Lucky's manipulation of the forces that would ensnare him, I felt that the two impressions were coming together: the apparent simplicity and the uncertainty as to whether there was acceptance, or even reverence, bringing about a conclusion where, out of and through the complexity, something had been connived at and a success achieved.


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