La terra trema (The Earth Trembles)

In Visconti’s Sicilian masterpiece, a fisherman’s budding leadership of the local labor force threatens the price-fixing schemes of wholesalers all too willing to put down an incipient rebellion. Based on a classic novel by Giovanni Verga, La Terra Trema was one of the most formally daring of all neorealist works, establishing the template for dozens of later films that would examine the emergence of political consciousness. The many extraordinary sequences are played out by a cast of actual fishermen, who are, to critic André Bazin, filmed as though “Renaissance princes.” 

Digital restoration from Istituto Luce Cinecittà.