Italian Film Director Francesco Rosi -- RIP

Francesco Rosi (right) during filming of
The Moment of Truth, a splendid movie
about a Spanish bullfighter and the
social conditions that shaped him.

The Italian film director Francesco Rosi recently passed away at age 92. His career was characterized by his firm intention to depict individual psychological reality and the environments which shaped his movies' characters. I think Rosi was a great director, although his movies gain power and eloquence if a viewer knows something about Italy, its social drama, and its history. I've linked a YouTube clip showing my favorite segment from Hands Over the City, which shows an animated Naples council meeting in which corrupt members gestured that their hands were clean  -- mani pulite. Part of the sequence's strength is Rosi's use of actual council members as actors. Supposedly, the council members kept arguing with each other after Rosi said the Italian version of "cut." I hope the clip provides some sense of Rosi's directorial skill and insight.

Rosi had many admirers among film makers, one of whom was Martin Scorsese. Rosi's American counterpart released a statement concerning the Neapolitan maestro which Variety cited in its Rosi obit. It's included in full here:

Francesco Rosi was, without a doubt, one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of Italian cinema—really, when all is said and done, one of the greatest filmmakers we’ve ever had, period. Rosi’s greatest films – ‘Hands Over the City,’ ‘The Mattei Affair,’ ‘Lucky Luciano,’ ‘Christ Stopped at Eboli,’ ‘Three Brothers’ and the incomparable ‘Salvatore Giuliano’ among them – are unlike anything else in cinema: complex historical investigations, as passionately devoted to uncovering painful truths as they are to celebrating the beauty and poetry of the people and the land Rosi loved with all his heart. There are so many passages in those pictures that have permanently marked me: the young husband sifting through the sand for his wife’s ring in ‘Three Brothers,’ the collapse of the building in ‘Hands Over the City,’ the mother wailing over her son’s body in ‘Salvatore Giuliano’… So many more… 

I had the honor of knowing the man. For me, Franco Rosi meant vitality, strength, fortitude, and the fiercest love – in a word, spirit. He led a long life and a good one, but it saddens me more than I can say to know that he is no longer among us. I’ll state it simply: he was the master.

Addio, Francesco e sogni d'oro.