Sicilia!

A beautiful simple film in high-contrast black-and-white. Tribute, commentary, criticism, discussions of food, history, class, music, politics, religion, the nature of Sicily and Sicilians Adapted from a novel, the film simply consists of a series of conversations perceived by a man who has returned to Sicily- from America, he says, but we learn Sicilians aren't always truthful. On landing the traveller talks with an orange-seller, a labourer who has been paid in the oranges he helped to grow because the grower cannot sell them himself; on a train he eavesdrops on two bureaucrats standing by a window, a talk with travelling-companions where a land-owner regrets that he cannot be a better man with a better conscience; on another train, a conversation with another man who lacked the courage to become a singer; a strange silent interlude some minutes long where the camera looks from a window at the arid landscape they pass through. Then the longest scene, a long conversation between the man and his mother about his childhood, her relationships with her father, a "man's man", her husband, who was so scared when she gave birth unexpectedly that he was no help at all, her children and other men. The two of them sit against a gleaming white wall by a table. The last scene is a meeting with an itinerant knife-sharpener- a kind of light relief and a figure of hope, an archetypal figure of the Sicilian past filmed in the open air of an empty square. He sharpens the traveller's penknife and returns half his fee. The film's technique is stylised and simple, gazing at faces, pulling back a little to show them against walls or other backgrounds, watching them and being watched in silence as well as speech. We are not told when the film is set (in the 1930s, in fact) but have to deduce it from evidence- the absence of motor cars, what the people say, the way they are dressed- and are left to infer that it is about a timeless place and people.

Sicilia! Is an unusual film that expands the definition of what a film is. It relies more on dialogue than cinematic effects/techniques. In fact, camera can stay on an actor for five minutes. It makes you feel as if you are watching a play than a film. Any cinephile will highly rate this film but I can imagine it'll be a class unto philistines.

What we remember is the form: black and white (very bright - probably the Sicilian sun), fixed shots and a few pans, actors declaiming a text (taken directly from the original novel), 4/3 aspect ratio, no music, a succession of three scenes, reminiscent of theatrical declamation.

This formal research, surely to serve the text and ideas, doesn't touch us. Despite its short running time, the film feels long. Even if the actors' declamation and what they say, what they tell, can make you smile, so radical is the staging bias that it verges on the ridiculous. Interesting and tiring at the same time. Best reserved for theater-lovers.

This might be the most broadly appealing film I've seen from Huillet/Straub. Bleak, challenging and funny, it's also deeply human in ways that even non-cineasts can relate to. Best known for their extraordinary landscapes, H&S were also masters of the close-up. The last shot of the outraged historian in History Lessons is equaled here by the final image of the mother in this film. Grotesque, ignorant (and leftist) but also deeply vulnerable, the scolding and hypocritical mother might be, in the conventional sense, the greatest character H&S ever brought to screen.

Beautiful historic documentary of the life in Sicily during the 30ies.

Stunning images on land, people and houses.

The majority of actors are villagers of Sicilian villages.

They speak in dialect, so it is difficult to understand the movie without subtitles. Central part in the movie are the oranges, that nobody wants to buy.

I saw the movie ten years ago and since then I didn't have occasion to saw it again. When I first saw the movie I also thought it is boring. I needed more years to understand that this is a great movie.

Hope everybody would get the chance to look at it, till the end.