Manos sobre la ciudad

This film seems an effort to engage the life and destiny of a city at the level of the political and social, using journalistic techniques but always with an awareness that these are also interpretations - something that most USian journalism tends to overlook. What will mostly bother people is that it lacks the usual human center - the man/woman/family to which the bad things happen which will cause us to care that they are happening. This is hardly an oversight; it is a choice, and one that deserves to be considered openly without the rush to judgment that otherwise occurs when confronted with the unfamiliar. The human center of the film is there, but always at the edges, implied. We barely glimpse the victims of the collapsed building, but their fate informs every frame. And the superb "portrayals" by actual members of the city council (the De Vita character, e.g.) give us not actors, but people enmeshed in the actuality. This film deserves wider awareness.

The first quarter of an hour of this film is completely mesmerising as we see a series of overhead shots of the different sides to the city of Naples and then the incredibly shot building collapse. At the same time we are made aware of the corruption in the building industry and how most of the money ends up in the same place all the time. Rod Steiger plays the main villain of the peace and it is an extraordinary performance. For considerable periods we simply see him prancing about his office, clearly struggling to think of the best way out of the immediate problem, the best way to get more political power and the best way for him and his son to stay on top. he expresses so much, and in such an Italian way, the pressures his constant messing with peoples' lives brings him. There are many fine sequences as the various political factions gang up and then get bought off as the big man inevitably gets his way. I preferred the slightly more fictionalised and later Three Brothers and Illustrious Corpses but this near documentary impression of Italy's boom building phase is very impressive and involving.

Francesco Rosi's movie "Le mani sulla città" ("Hands Over the City" in English) is about a developer (Rod Steiger) whose building collapses, leading to political fallout. While it looks like a simple story of corruption in Naples, it could be anywhere on earth. Any time that someone skimps on something, the people are going to suffer. People who insist that there should be no government involvement in anything don't realize (or refuse to realize) that they might be the ones suffering.

If the movie has any downside, it's that we don't get to hear much from the people who suffered from the collapsed building. After the collapse, there are some scenes of protests, but most of the movie looks at the inner workings of the city government and how accusations fly in all directions.

Rod Steiger (speaking perfect Italian) is particularly interesting as the developer-turned-city councilman. The guy looks like he could be any working stiff, but he has all sorts of Machiavellian plans. The last scene shows the various buildings throughout Naples, forcing the viewer to wonder if the whole thing will soon start over. All in all, it's a really good movie.

PS: One scene inadvertently portends political crises to come in Italy. Towards the end of the movie, a character walks by a poster of Aldo Moro. Moro later got kidnapped and executed by the Red Brigades.

Rod Steiger as a local city politician in an Italian film by Francesco Rosi makes a virtuoso performance as usual in his younger days and is convincing enough in fluent Italian in one of Francesco Rosi's usual almost documentary panoramic exposures of social life especially in relation with power. Everything appears absolutely natural here, as if you were yourself present at all those turbulernt political meetings with votations and intrigues around the mayor, and the crisis is brought on by a collapsing building of many storeys and flats owned by local leaders of the city government, who choose to fight it out against allegations of corruption, and the council scenes with dramatic quarrels Italian style pounding on in heated passion are the best of the film. It happens in Naples, but the situation could be anywhere in any great city in the world planning to exploit and make money on new suburb constructions of horrible inhuman skyscrapers all looking the same - with new prospects of coming tumbling down.

Good inquiry movie, talking about the "roaring" '60 when every builder wanted to get richer and richer, basing his success on poor people's needs. It's a constant in Rosi's movies this political touch, but it's not about complaining about one party or the other, but it's more subtly focused on a certain italian laissez-faire in political matters and in social affairs that in some way is still alive today.

Its way of leaving a great space to dialogues and to silent scenes around the city contributes to create a journalistic approach and the witty speeches give the movie an interesting touch.

Well assembled, quite involving, an interesting piece about how power tends to contribute to its power only.

Also an essential view on the 60s and italian postwar society.