Il sole sorge ancora

Applauded on its release as a powerful depiction of a local Resistance against Fascism and the Nazis during the end of WWII, and included in a 1993 Tv documentary on neo realism as one of the prime specimens of that great movement, Il Sole Sorge Ancora, the only film directed by maverick Aldo Vergano, still carries a strong impact. The story of a partisan, dodging the terror of the Germans on a country estate where he becomes involved with both a working class seamstress and an enticing aristocratic property owner, has at least two sequences that belong in a compendium of the classics. The first is a strikingly edited firing squad scene in which a priest, chanting the Ora Pro Nobis prayer which is repeated by the watching crowd, and a young worker radical are marched to their deaths.(The priest is played by future director and film scholar Carlo Lizzani and the radical by future director of The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo.) The second is the climax in which peasants and partisans rout the more well equipped Nazis using guerilla tactics as well as farm animals. The film as a whole can serve as an inspiration to those fighting against newer forms of Fascism in more recent times.