Salvatore Giuliano is a 1962 film directed by Francesco Rosi.
It is a biopic of Salvatore Giuliano
, a Sicilian bandit and fugitive crime lord, from shortly after the Allied liberation of the island in 1943 to his murder in 1950 at the age of 27.
The film picks up in 1945, with the end of World War II and the restoration of civilian government in Italy. In Sicily, pro-independence politicians are fomenting armed revolt against the government in Rome. Needing soldiers, they enlist Giuliano's gang of bandits as anti-Roman militia. A guerilla war ensues, with Giuliano and his men regularly ambushing and killing Italian soldiers and police, even as the Rome government sends the regular army to the island in an attempt to wipe them out, and the police make mass arrests. The government makes a deal in which Sicily gains limited autonomy, which makes Giuliano less useful to the politicians in Sicily. Giuliano returns to banditry. He and his band shoot up a Communist rally in 1947, which turns popular opinion against them. Eventually the mob and the police start conspiring to bring Giuliano down.
See also novel and film The Sicilian, which were also about Salvatore Giuliano. (The book was written by Mario Puzo and shared continuity with his Godfather novels.)
Tropes:
- Anachronic Order: The film starts with the authorities finding Giuliano's corpse in 1950. Then it cuts to 1945 and the Sicilian separatists enlisting Giuliano in their cause. From there the film unfolds in two separate narrative threads, bouncing back and forth between scenes of Giuliano's 1945-1950 career, and scenes set 1950-1952 with the investigation of Giuliano's murder and the trial of his men for the massacre at the Communist rally.
- Distant Finale: The last scene skips forward eight years to the murder of Nunzio in 1960, implied to be delayed retribution for his part in the betrayal of Giuliano.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: Pisciotta dramatically works the action of his submachine gun just to scare Nunzio.
- The Faceless: There is not one single closeup of Giuliano over the course of the movie while he is alive. He is only seen onscreen a few times, usually at a distance (wearing a white coat when he's with his men) or from behind. In the only scene where he has more than one line, his final confrontation with Pisciotta, he's offscreen completely. We get a better look at him when he's a corpse, but even then his face is usually shot obliquely.
- He Knows Too Much: Part of the reason for killing Giuliano is to make sure he can't reveal who ordered the 1947 massacre at the Communist rally. And it's strongly implied that Pisciotta is poisoned at the end to prevent him from doing the same.
- How We Got Here: Starts off with the cops having found Giuliano's corpse in 1950. The course of his criminal career is traced from there.
- Killed Offscreen: Pisciotta's murder of Giuliano is not shown; the cops at the scene hear three shots and rush in to find that Giuliano is already dead. (Legend has it that in Real Life, after confronting Pisciotta, Giuliano accepted his denial and went back to sleep.)
- The Mafia: Giuliano is not formally a part of the Mafia in Sicily but they have a close working relationship with him. When the mob decides that Giuliano's presence in Sicily is bringing too much heat on them, they arrange to betray him.
- Match Cut: From Pisciotta climbing up out of his hiding place, a hole concealed in a floor, to Pisciotta standing up in court.
- Narrator: Director Francesco Rosi can be heard from time to time providing exposition about things like the Sicilian separatist movement.
- Never Learned to Read: Illiteracy is common in Sicily. One shepherd who signed a statement with an X later claims that he didn't sign it, saying that all X's look alike.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Nunzio, the mobster who orchestrates the betrayal of Giuliano, and who is killed in the end, is based on Benedetto Minasola, a Real Life associate of Giuliano who really was killed in 1960.
- Sidelong Glance Biopic: An extreme example in which the subject of the biopic, Salvatore Giuliano, is hardly even seen onscreen and has only a few lines; his story is told by how the people around him are affected.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When the mob and the politicians running Sicily separately conclude that Giuliano is more trouble than he's worth, they conspire to betray and murder him.
