The story is the harried attempt of a Sicilian partisan, as part of the risorgimento, to reach Garibaldi's headquarters in Northern Italy, and to petition the revered revolutionary to rescue part of his besieged land. Along the way, the peasant hero encounters many colorful Italians, differing in class and age, and holding political opinions of every type. There is a key train scene, and the film ends on the battlefield, Italian unification a success, despite brutal losses.
Gesuzza, La Sposa Garibaldina, Gesuzza, the Garibaldian Wife
Italy
Italy
A Black and white AND Italian movie? I'm so getting my kino card now.
I learned about this film through History class and thought it would be interesting enough to watch. It turned out pretty above average, it's no hidden masterpiece but it isn't unwatchable either. The characters are neat, I quite liked our main hero. He looks exactly like the gigachad meme which I found amusing, and he acts like a real chad throughout the film. He easily gets the best moment in the film, where he flies into a rant about how the Nationalists in Piedmont are partying hard while the Bourbons are butchering Sicily. Some of the bit players are memorable, but they don't get much to…
A really good film from which to start looking at 1930s Italian productions -- high level of rural-Sicily pictorialism, occasional throwbacks to 1910-20s film style, and narrative content that anticipates lots of what was best in postwar cinema, from Bandits Of Orgosolo and The Leopard to Christ Stopped At Eboli and Salvatore Giulani. If the creeping fascism of the year is visible in the script, it isn't overpowering.
1860 especially fit into a precise strategy of re-appropriation of the Risorgimento by the regime and by Fascist intellectuals that was developing in the early 1930s. The film is regarded as presaging neo- realism, as it was wholly shot on location and made use of many non- professional actors. The film recounts the spedizione dei Mille (the Expedition of the Thousand) and the Risorgimento as a whole, as a popular epic. And yet the Redshirts are never really seen in the film. Interestingly, in its first release the film had a modern-day coda attached. This consisted of two shots showing elderly veterans of the 1860 campaigns saluting and being saluted by parading Fascists in Rome. Clearly enough, 1860 is part…
girl what even -- i watched this with my friend for her italian film studies class
my prof really said "oh you can watch this movie that's a little over an hour long and has eng subs or you can watch this other one that's almost 3 hours long and has no eng subs" and expected me to pick the other movie... ma'am u underestimate how little i want to do work
Beautiful, authentic small-scale epic.
Learned of it in Peter Bondanella's "Italian Cinema From Neorealism to the Present."
Somewhat reminiscent of Renoir on the popular front (Toni and Grand Illusion specifically), if not necessarily in political intentions but in its tactics, excellent location shooting, decentralization of the primary emotional narrative through the constant zooming in to the individual emotions and out into the historical dramatics, and the extremely important fact that What Is To Come is inseparable from the films effects when viewing it now. A messier subject (Italian Unification) begets a messier disposition, although I think it is largely to its benefit, the spirit of its construction is very much in keeping with the spirit of the film.
Maybe this is true for all art to a certain extent, but it is always interesting to me how for Cinema, form doesn't really follow function except in the extreme, form instead takes off from history, technological/political of course, but I would argue from a more social and psychological version of it.
Really worried that there are some fascist undertones here that I didn’t pick up on and am gonna internalize.
Cool sheepskin coats! Some beautiful scenes on the water! Obsessed with the idea of crossing the Mediterranean in a rowboat.
The actual plot is almost non-existent, only if you know the historical background it may make sense somehow (it is useless as a documentary for instance, or even to know something more). The atmosphere the director has recreated is quite nice, but the overall film does not really trigger the intended involvement.
The movie is well shot with many striking scenery shots, but I failed to grasp the full charm of the story. Guess one have to have some basic knowledge about 1860 and the war that was going on, something which I lacked going into this movie. And since the movie ends in the middle of a battle I was none the wiser getting out of it.
Made ten years before the film that would later be hailed as the start of neorealism, 1860 feels like something by Rossellini. Wow!
The more I watch films from the early decades of cinema, the more I’m struck by how rapidly it evolved — bold, sincere, and inventive. It’s fascinating to see how individual films inspired great figures and influenced later cinematic movements. How certain patterns or some random elements were picked up and turned into trends for future generations of filmmakers. Or how profound ideas were sometimes diminished under the weight of the skillful promotion of mediocrity.
Each new film I watch becomes a richer, fuller experience as it naturally fits into the grand puzzle of cinema history. Isn’t that incredible?
Watched for school. The Eisenstein-ish stuff is nice but mostly it's just boring and fascist.
