The social conscience of Italian filmmaker Carlo Lizzani is evident in his 1966 crime film Wake Up and Die as early as the opening frames, as thugs spray a working class community with submachine gun fire and the screen is splattered, not with blood, but the contents of shattered milk bottles. An anti-Fascist fighter in his youth and former film critic for a Communist newspaper, Lizzani learned his craft at the hem of neorealist titans Roberto Rossellini and Giuseppe De Santis and infused his own work - which ran the gamut from comedies to westerns to historical dramas and nervy tales of torn from the headlines - with a heartfelt concern for humanity. Based on the exploits of Milanese outlaw Luciano Lutring, whose daring robberies on both sides of the Italian and French border netted him, by report, more than 30 billion lire, Wake Up and Die stars Austrian actor Robert Hoffman as the farmer's son turned "machine gun soloist," whose habit of carrying his weapon in a violin case helped make him a folk hero. Gian-Marie Volonté costars as Lutring's dogged police nemesis while Lisa Gastoni won the Italian Golden Globe and Silver Ribbon awards for her role as Lutring's long-suffering wife. Made in the immediate aftermath of Lutring's 1965 arrest (his 22-year prison sentence was halved by good behavior), Wake Up and Die was a hit with Italian audiences. A French take on the tale, The Gypsy (1975), starring Alain Delon, followed a decade later.

By Richard Harland Smith