La terra trema (Die Erde bebt)

For his second film, Luchino Visconti was finally able to draw on material by Giovanni Verga, whom he admired greatly and who had helped shape Italian literature seven decades earlier as the leading representative of Verismo. With La terra trema, Visconti succeeded in creating what is arguably the purest expression of cinematic Neorealism: an epic tale of everyday life in the poor Sicilian fishing village of Aci Trezza. Instead of actors: real residents who speak in accents incomprehensible to non-Sicilians. Instead of artificial sets: the world in natural light. Instead of conventional narrative: the details of life, the passing of time in boldly uncompressed blocks of reality. These also form a story of rebellion against exploitative circumstances. Visconti's radicalism in the quasi-documentary also marries with operatic force and a stylisation that produces ‘natural’ grand cinema – the inevitable neorealist paradox. (C.H.)