User Reviews

This case still affects not just in the so-called Roaring Twenties but also of today and of our future. As we see that Nicola Sacco and Bartholomeo Vanzetti, two Italian born men and devout anarchists were executed due to their anarchists beliefs.

Murder was gruesome in Brantree, MA but it was their beliefs and the Red Scare that really not just divided a nation but divided a whole entire world.

Case that still haunts us in the twenties, haunts us today and for the future. As the tag line says "If it happened once, it could happen again!" The late, great Riccardo Cucciolla and late great, Gian Marie Volente in the respected Sacco and Vanzetti roles. Were made as scapegoats as they could not get a fair trial as the criminal justice system also looked at them being Italians, which were in the minority at the time.

Sacco was the quiet family man shoemaker and Vanzetti was more of the spokesman, fish peddler of the two and more of the talker. And maybe would had been a college professor if he had a college degree had it probably not been for his beliefs or being Italian. That they are portrayed to be. As the case also takes a toll on their families along the way.

Cyri Cusack as a bullying prosecutor steals the movie. As he wants to just get them to the electric chair asap it seems over their beliefs. Despite the worldwide protests over them, Cusack's character finally gets his wish.

A case that should be studied all over the world!

My current obsession with Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté eventually brought me to Giuliano Montaldo's Sacco and Vanzetti, an excellent courtroom drama where Volonté and Riccardo Cucciolla play two anarchists unjustly tried for murder, while it becomes obvious they're in fact being tried for being anarchists, lefties, reds, whatever, in a country that never had any love for them, and in a time that was perhaps the second worst time to be an anarchist/communist/socialist in America after the McCarthy years. This movie is set a few decades before that, but the hysteria and strident violation of civil rights is the same.

Montaldo does a good job directing the movie - for instance the black-and-white opening sequence, with the cops making a raid on an Italian neighbourhood, rounding up men, women and children in front of their buildings, spanking innocent people, and basically acting like vicious animals, is a powerful sequence that immediately sets the theme of abuse of power. Then we have the courtroom scenes, with Cyril Cusack playing a fierce DA seeking to send the two anarchists to the electric chair, Geoffrey Keen playing a clearly bigoted judge, and Milo O'Shea as the defense lawyer who is systematically humiliated, bullied and discredited because he's doing his job too well. When these three actors share a scene you can see sparks fly off the screen! Ennio Morricone provides the music, which is melancholy and elegiac, and Joan Baez contributes with some excellent ballads that are positioned in key moments of the movie. These two together make the score for this movie one of the best I've ever heard.

Gian Maria Volonté is of course excellent: his performance is showier and more furious than Cucciolla's. But then their characters also have different personalities. Whereas Volonté's character, Vanzetti, understands the mythical dimension of his person, realizes that his death will turn him into a symbol of freedom for the new generations, and he's fine with that, Cucciolla plays Sacco, an ordinary man who wants to live and who is having trouble accepting his new condition as a man charged with murder. Cucciolla received a prize in Cannes for his performance in this movie over Volonté and I have to say it wasn't undeserved. His subdued, reserved performance was the right touch that makes him the focus point of the viewer's sympathies.

Sacco and Vanzetti is a great movie, a beautiful movie, that tells an interesting episode about American history that is often ignored - the racism, discrimination and suspicion against immigrants. Like any other country, the USA has an official history that is more mythology than truth, that is inevitable to all nations in their construction of a national identity, but I'm glad there will always be movies like these to continue to deflate the myths and reveal the truth. I just hope there will always be viewers for them too.

Extremely well acted but terribly put together film of one of America's most shameful injustices. Gian Maria Volonté and Riccardo Cucciolla portray the doomed anarchists in director Giuliano Montaldo's production. It suffers from what appears to be a serious lack of location work (it rarely even appears that events are taking place in the US) and Montaldo's direction is surprisingly lifeless. There's no feeling of what the country was going through during the politically turbulent 1920s, when anarchists, communists and other radicals were being deported en masse. The film relies on courtroom proceedings that are confusing rather than enlightening. Volonté and Cucciolla, as well as Cyril Cusack as a wily DA are excellent as are Milo O'Shea and William Prince as the Sacco & Vanzetti's first and second lawyers. Ennio Morricone's score is terrific, marred at times by poorly placed folk songs by Joan Baez.

Really such a sad tale and a scar on US history. As the two main characters are sentenced to death over their political beliefs. Despite the murders and robbery very brutal on it and tragic.

They were set as an example during the Red Scare and in the Great Depression in the 1920's. Sadly they were not given a fair and just trial. They were condemned before they even got to trial.

Really the justice system was really broken then as it is now. And they are not the first nor the last time an innocent person has gotten jailed and/or condemned to die.

Trial is up there with Rosenberg, OJ, Lindberg, Bundy, just to name a few. Sadly the victims and their families never at all were mentioned. Like they were nobodies as sadly not the first nor will be the last.

Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)has the finest music a political propaganda flick can have or afford:a song of Joan Baez,always ready for some leftist propaganda,and Ennio Morricone's score.

The narration is strong, logic and energetic.Two Italian anarchists,living in the USA,in '20 (why,since they might live in the Soviet Union,the proletarians' motherland,where almost all was fine and the justice was made and the trials were as fair as possible …),are unjustly accused of a murder they have not committed.But the trial is in fact political,and not penal.The film celebrates the two anarchists as heroes of the proletariat and it has a purely political and historical content.It is a keen criticism of racism and of political trials.

When,in other countries,in fierce leftist regimes,people like Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti became prosecutors,they did not want to know about justice,correct trials,and mercy.And when Gian Maria Volontè tells the governor about violence and the various forms of violence,the crap philosophy reaches a pinnacle with Gian Maria Volontè's remark that knowing the fact that one will die is also a violence (like this could justify anarchism).

Sacco e Vanzetti (1971) is surely a good movie,and as a matter fact one of the few well made films of political propaganda. Through this quite interesting chapter of social and political history,the director Giuliano Montaldo has a political message to convey.So,a very good and interesting movie,but with an unusual bad performance from Gian Maria Volontè:his role is very strident and of an rhetorical triteness,a piece of ridiculous declamation.I was looking forward to see this Italian movie since '88,when I saw an image of the two main actors in a magazine. The political lesson of Sacco e Vanzetti (1971) is very flawed and unrighteous.While the two anarchists were asking justice in a political system they were doing everything to undermine,in countries led by similar leftist chiefs many millions were begging in vain for justice. Giuliano Montaldo tries to transform Bartolomeo Vanzetti into a political prophet,and into a strategist;which the man was not.In the '20s,two Italian anarchists with no education and political thought whatsoever could think that by promoting anarchism the social classes will be abolished and the humanity will leave in peace and prosperity,each working honestly,etc.;this was their political and cultural level.This kind of utopianism and irresponsibility has brought much harm.In '20,when the two anarchists were blaming the capitalism for being inhuman and unjust,horrible things were already happening in communist regimes.But I think this did not interest our goodhearted Utopists.Anyway,if leftist anarchists were irresponsible in '20,and had no idea about political things,even more shameless was Giuliano Montaldo's attitude in 1971,after all the Leninist and communist and leftist Carnages in Europe and in the rest of the world were well known.The brutal capitalism of the '20s system,as depicted in this film,and the thoughtless anarchism that has no idea about how to govern and instead proposes stupid and fantastical utopias about the society without classes,are not the only two alternatives.And since the movie seems to propose seriously the anarchism as a human and political attitude,it must be answered also seriously.

Giuliano Montaldo,now 77 years old,is the author of Nudi per Vivere (1964);Ad Ogni Costo (1967):with Janet Leigh,Edward G. Robinson and Klaus Kinski;Machine Gun McCain;Dio è con Noi (1969):with Richard Johnson,Franco Nero;Giordano Bruno (1973) with Gian Maria Volontè and Charlotte Rampling;The Gold Rimmed Glasses ;Time to Kill :with Nicolas Cage;and Mind Control:with Ben Gazzara,Ingrid Thulin,Andréa Ferréol ....

The cast of Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)includes Cyril Cusack,Riccardo Cucciolla.