Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema (1948), now available on DVD from Image Entertainment, is a major Italian film and landmark neo-realist work. When it first appeared, the film was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and has received serious attention ever since, even being voted one of the 10 best films of all time in the 1962 Sight & Sound poll. The story focuses on a Sicilian village where fishermen struggle against both the elements and scheming merchants. A returning war veteran, though, has other ideas about how to solve these problems.

The film was based on the novel I Malavoglia by Giovanni Verga, perhaps better known as the author of Cavalleria Rusticana (the source for the opera) and Little Novels of Sicily. Visconti combined this with an earlier idea for a short documentary and ideas drawn from the writings of Antonio Gramsci. The entire project was something of a stretch for Visconti who came from an aristocratic Northern Italian family but became interested in the social and political problems facing his poor southern neighbors. He secured significant funding from the Italian Communist Party but still had to talk a prominent Italian producer into providing more money and even ended up selling personal possessions like his mother's jewels and family paintings to help finance the picture.

In La Terra Trema, Visconti followed the neo-realist ideas of using non-professional actors; in this case they even spoke their own dialect rather than a more familiar form of Italian. The dialect was so impenetrable for outsiders -- supposedly even Sicilians in other districts had trouble with the language -- that Visconti ended up adding voice-over narration. Visconti went through numerous rehearsals with these non-professionals before giving them the plot situations he hoped they would enact in their own words.

Filming started in the village of Aci Trezza on November 10, 1947 and lasted until May 26, 1948. Visconti used a small crew that included future directors Francesco Rosi (Christ Stopped at Eboli, 1979) and Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo and Juliet, 1968). He avoided the techniques of big studio films, instead using natural light, long takes and authentic locations. Visconti intended to make two more films - one on peasants and another on miners - so they would form a trilogy but they were never made. (However, La Terra Trema is sometimes considered a loose trilogy with The Leopard (1963) and Rocco and His Brothers, 1960.)

The Image DVD of La Terra Trema is a no-frills affair that offers no extra features other than optional English subtitles. This is the complete director's cut of the film and the visual presentation is good considering the economic limitations under which the film was made. There is some minor speckling that occurs throughout the film and you may need to adjust your audio levels to properly amplify the dialogue, music and sound effects at times. Until someone like Criterion decides to remaster this neorealism masterpiece, this is a nice addition to any cinephile's DVD library.

For more information on La Terra Trema and other Visconti films, visit Image Entertainment.To purchase a copy of La Terra Trema, visit Movies Unlimited.

By James Steffen