Cristo si è fermato a Eboli by Carlo Levi

The early portions of the film follow Levi as he makes the long trip to Gagliano, which is past Eboli, the last train stop. Their ways, many of which descended from medieval superstitions, were certainly not his ways, but unlike Mussolini’s Fascism, their culture was genuine and honest, something that Levi could appreciate. A trained medical doctor who was born in Turin to a wealthy Jewish physician, Levi was exiled for his anti-Fascist political activity in 1935, but the punishment turned out to be a blessing of sorts as he grew to appreciate and admire the peasants with whom he (along with a half-dozen other political dissidents) was forced to live. Milillo), Antonio Allocca (Don Cosimino)īased on the 1945 memoir of the same title by painter, political activist, and physician Carlo Levi, Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli ( Cristo si è fermato a Eboli) chronicles the year that Levi spent in political exile in Gagliano, a small, ancient, crumbling town in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata, one of the poorest in the country. Stars: Gian Maria Volvonté (Carlo Levi), Paolo Bonacelli (Don Luigi Magalone), Alain Cuny (Baron Nicola Rotunno), Lea Massari (Luisa Levi), Irene Papas (Giulia Venere), François Simon (Don Trajella), Luigi Infantino (Chauffeur), Accursio Di (Carpenter), Francesco Callari (Dr.

It seems that, for both Levi and Rosi, materialism and the spirit meet in art.Screenplay: Francesco Rosi & Tonino Guerra & Raffaele La Capria (story by Francesco Rosi and Tonino Guerra based on the novel by Carlo Levi) Rosi's understanding of Levi's themes is profound-his own cinematic career has dealt largely with corruption and despair in the south in La Svida, Lucky Luciano, Salvatore Giuliano, etc.-and Pasqualino De Santis' cinematography, breathtaking. In their misery and in the rapacious way in which the petit-bourgeoisie exploit it to save their souls, Levi locates the roots of an indigenous fascism, playing on atavistic prejudices and paltry fears. In Francesco Rosi's stunning film, Gian Maria Volonte portrays Carlo Levi, but he shares the role of protagonist with the camera as he walks the steep and stony streets of the village and, very slowly, comes to understand the combination of superstition and resignation by which a universal peasantry have survived over generations. His experiences were recorded in the masterful postwar novel Christ Stopped at Eboli.

In 1935 Carlo Levi, the leftist writer, physician and painter, was banished by the Fascist government to three years' exile in Gagliano. In the village of Gagliano, in the impoverished Lucania region of south-central Italy, a proverb reflects the unchanging nature of their isolation: even Christ stopped at Eboli, the town at the bottom of the bare and craggy hill.

Cristo si è fermato a Eboli by Carlo Levi