Portella della Ginestra massacre
Encyclopedia
The Portella della Ginestra massacre was one of the more violent acts of in the history of modern Italian
politics, when 11 people were killed and 33 wounded during May Day
celebrations in Sicily on May 1, 1947, in the municipality of Piana degli Albanesi
. Those held responsible were the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano
and his band – although their motives and intentions are still a matter of controversy.
, the peasants of the neighbouring towns of Piana degli Albanesi
, San Giuseppe Jato
and San Cipirello
used to gather at Portella della Ginestra for the Labour Day
celebrations at the initiative of the physician and peasant leader Nicola Barbato
, who used to speak to the crowd from a big rock that was later called "Barbato's Stone". The tradition was interrupted during the Fascist period and resumed after the fall of the Fascist regime.
The massacre
took place twelve days after a surprise victory by the People’s Block (Blocco del popolo) – a coalition of the Italian Communist Party
(Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI) – in the elections for the Constituent Assembly
of the autonomous region of Sicily
on April 20–21, 1947. The People’s Block obtained 30.4 percent of the vote, while the Christian Democrat Party got 20.5% and the Qualunquist
and Monarchist
came third and fourth.
With national elections set for October 1947, the leftist win in Sicily created speculation that a coalition led by Palmiro Togliatti
might bring Italy under Communist rule. In Sicily, the communist leader on Sicily, Girolamo Li Causi
, pledged to redistribute large land holdings, but to preserve any of 100 hectares (247 acres) or less.
On May 1, 1947, hundreds of mostly poor peasants, gathered at Portella della Ginestra, three kilometers from the town of Piana degli Albanesi
on the way to San Giuseppe Jato
for the traditional international Labour Day parade. At 10:15 a.m., the Communist party secretary from Piana degli Albanesi began to address the crowd when gunfire broke out. It was later determined that machine guns had been fired from the surrounding hills, as well as by men on horseback. Eleven people were killed, including four children, Serafino Lascari (15), Giovanni Grifò (12), Giuseppe Di Maggio and Vincenzo La Fata, both seven years old. Thirty-three people were wounded, including a little girl who had her jaw shot off.
The attack was attributed to the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano
. His aim had been to punish local leftists for the recent election results. In an open letter he took sole responsibility for the murders and claimed that he had only wanted his men to fire above the heads of the crowd; the deaths had been a mistake.
Until the massacre, Giuliano had been regarded by many as a modern day Robin Hood
who stole from (and even kidnapped) wealthy Sicilians to help the impoverished Sicilians. The shooting of children and peasant at Ginestra, however, outraged his former admirers, and a bounty of three million lire ($13,200 in 1947) was offered by the Italian government for Giuliano's capture.
The massacre created a national scandal. The Communist-controlled Italian General Confederation of Labour
called a general strike in protest against the massacre. The Minister of the Interior, the Christian Democrat Mario Scelba
, reported to Parliament the next day that so far as the police could determine, the Portella della Ginestra shooting was non-political. Bandits notoriously infested the valley in which it occurred, said Scelba. Li Causi disagreed and charged that the Mafia
had perpetrated the attack, in cahoots with the large landowners, monarchists and the rightist Uomo Qualunque Front
. The debate ended in a fist fight between the left and the right. Nearly 200 deputies took part in the brawl.
Li Causi and Scelba would be the main opponents in the aftermath of the massacre and the successive killing of the suspected perpetrator Giuliano, and the trial against Giuliano’s lieutenant Gaspare Pisciotta
and other remaining members of Giuliano’s gang. While Scelba dismissed any political motive, Li Causi stressed the political nature of the massacre – and tried to uncover the truth. Li Causi claimed that the police inspector Ettore Messana – supposed to coordinate the persecution of the bandits – had been in league with Giuliano and denounced Scelba for allowing Messana to remain in office. Later documents would prove the accusation.
Li Causi suspected a campaign against the left and linked it with the crisis in the national government (under Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi
), which would lead to the expulsion of the communists and socialist from government, as well as to prevent the left from entering the regional government. On May 30, 1947, Giuseppe Alessi
, became the first president of the Sicilian region with the support of the centre right and the same day De Gasperi announced his new centrist government, who had been in the national union governments since 1945.
Speaking at Portella della Ginestra on the second anniversary of the massacre, Li Causi publicly called on Giuliano to name names. He received a written reply from the bandit leader:
Li Causi responded by reminding Giuliano that he would almost certainly be betrayed: "Don’t you understand that Scelba will have you killed." Giuliano again replied, hinting at the powerful secrets that he possessed:
Salvatore Giuliano was killed on July 5, 1950, when the hearings for the trial against Giuliano’s captured associates started in Viterbo
, near Rome
. He always denied that there had been anyone behind him who had ordered the killing. However, his lieutenant Pisciotta and other witnesses claimed that a few days before the massacre, on April 27, 1947, Giuliano had received a letter, which he destroyed immediately after reading it. He told his band: “Boys, the hour of our liberation is at hand.” According to the witnesses, the letter demanded the massacre at Portella delle Ginestra in exchange for liberty for all of the band.
. Scelba was again said to have been involved in the plot to carry out the massacre, but the accusations were often contradictionary or vague. In the end the judge concluded that no higher authority had ordered the massacre, and that the Giuliano band had acted autonomously. At the Viterbo trial Pisciotta said:
Pisciotta also claimed that he had killed the bandit Salvatore Giuliano
in his sleep by arrangement with Scelba. However, there was no evidence that Scelba had had any relationship with Pisciotta.
At the trial for the Portella della Ginestra massacre, Gaspare Pisciotta
said:
While serving his sentence he wrote his autobiography awaiting a new trial at which he would be charged with killing Giuliano. Some authorities were beginning to take his evidence more serious, and perjury
and other charges were made against police and Carabinieri. Pisciotta realised that he had been abandoned and was threatening to reveal much more than at the first trial, in particular who signed the letter which had been brought to Giuliano just before the attack. On February 9, 1954, he took a cup of coffee with what he thought was a tuberculosis
medicine. Instead someone had replaced it with strychnine
. Within an hour he was dead and his autobiography disappeared.
The massacre created a national scandal, which ended in 1956 with the conviction of the remaining members of Giuliano's band. It still remains a highly controversial topic. The finger of blame has been pointed at numerous sources, including the Italian government. Leftists who were the victims of the attack have blamed the landed baron
s and the Mafia
; significantly, the memorial plaque erected by them makes no mention of Giuliano or his band:
While some historians see the massacre as a conspiracy of the Mafia, anti-communist political forces – the Christian-Democratic party in particular – and American intelligence services in the wake of the Cold War
, others consider the bloodbath as the culmination of local struggles for land rights and land reform in the area of Piana degli Albanesi
and San Giuseppe Jato
. Just as at the end of World War I, the post-war period saw an increase of violence between landowners backed by the Mafia and left-wing peasant movements. A few weeks before the massacre, the local Mafia boss of Piana, Francesco Cuccia
, and others had asked landowners for money to "put an end to the communists once and for all." They made clear that they were ready to go beyond the traditional acts of Mafia violence that had been used against the socialist peasant movement before the rise of fascism in the early 1920s when six socialist militants had been killed in Piana.
is a 1962 Italian film directed by Francesco Rosi
. Shot in a neo-realist documentary, non-linear style, it follows the lives of those involved with Giuliano. When Rosi came to Sicily in 1961 to re-enact the Portella Della Ginestra sequence massacre for the film, the trauma from 14 years earlier was still fresh. He asked 1,000 peasants to go back and enact exactly what they, their friends and relatives had been through. Events nearly slipped out of control. When the gunfire sound effects started, the crowd panicked and knocked over one of the cameras in rush to escape; women wept and knelt in prayer; men threw themselves to the ground in agony. One old woman, dressed entirely in black, planted herself before the camera and repeated in an anguished wail, 'Where are my children?' Two of her sons had died at the hands of Giuliano and his band.
Michael Cimino
's 1987 version, a film adaptation of Mario Puzo
's The Sicilian
, was filmed instead at Sutera
and Caltanissetta
. The massacre was also depicted in 2009 in Giuseppe Tornatore
's film Baarìa – La porta del vento.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
politics, when 11 people were killed and 33 wounded during May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
celebrations in Sicily on May 1, 1947, in the municipality of Piana degli Albanesi
Piana degli Albanesi
Piana degli Albanesi is a comune with 6,427 inhabitants in the Province of Palermo, Sicily.The town is the most important and populous Arbëreshë community in Sicily and it is the episcopal see of the Byzantine Catholic Church...
. Those held responsible were the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano
Salvatore Giuliano
Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian peasant. It has been suggested that the subjugated social status of his class led him to become a bandit and separatist. He was mythologised during his life and after his death...
and his band – although their motives and intentions are still a matter of controversy.
Preceding events
From May 1893, during the period of the Fasci SicilianiFasci Siciliani
The Fasci Siciliani, short for Fasci Siciliani dei Lavoratori , were a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration, which arose in Sicily in the years between 1889 and 1894...
, the peasants of the neighbouring towns of Piana degli Albanesi
Piana degli Albanesi
Piana degli Albanesi is a comune with 6,427 inhabitants in the Province of Palermo, Sicily.The town is the most important and populous Arbëreshë community in Sicily and it is the episcopal see of the Byzantine Catholic Church...
, San Giuseppe Jato
San Giuseppe Jato
San Giuseppe Jato is a village in the Province of Palermo in Sicily, southern Italy.The village sits in a hilly region of Palermo's hinterland, 31 km from the Sicilian capital.-History:...
and San Cipirello
San Cipirello
San Cipirello is a comune in the Province of Palermo in the Italian region Sicily, located about 25 km southwest of Palermo. As of 31 December 2004, it had a population of 5,201 and an area of 20.9 km².San Cipirello borders the following municipalities: Monreale, San Giuseppe Jato....
used to gather at Portella della Ginestra for the Labour Day
International Workers' Day
International Workers' Day is a celebration of the international labour movement and left-wing movements. It commonly sees organized street demonstrations and marches by working people and their labour unions throughout most of the world. May 1 is a national holiday in more than 80 countries...
celebrations at the initiative of the physician and peasant leader Nicola Barbato
Nicola Barbato
Nicola Barbato, , was a Arbëreshë socialist and politician. He was one of the national leaders of the Fasci Siciliani a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration in 1891-1894, and perhaps might have been the ablest among them, according to the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm.-Early...
, who used to speak to the crowd from a big rock that was later called "Barbato's Stone". The tradition was interrupted during the Fascist period and resumed after the fall of the Fascist regime.
The massacre
Massacre
A massacre is an event with a heavy death toll.Massacre may also refer to:-Entertainment:*Massacre , a DC Comics villain*Massacre , a 1932 drama film starring Richard Barthelmess*Massacre, a 1956 Western starring Dane Clark...
took place twelve days after a surprise victory by the People’s Block (Blocco del popolo) – a coalition of the Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
(Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI) – in the elections for the Constituent Assembly
Sicilian regional election, 1947
The Sicilian regional election of 1947 took place on 20 April 1947.The electoral alliance between the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist Party was the most voted list. After the election Giuseppe Alessi and, later, Franco Restivo, both Christian Democrats, governed the Region at the...
of the autonomous region of Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
on April 20–21, 1947. The People’s Block obtained 30.4 percent of the vote, while the Christian Democrat Party got 20.5% and the Qualunquist
Uomo Qualunque Front
The Front of the Ordinary Man was a short-lived populist libertarian and poujadist party in Italy...
and Monarchist
Monarchist National Party
The Monarchist National Party was a political party in Italy founded in 1946, uniting conservatives, liberal conservatives, conservative liberals and nationalists...
came third and fourth.
With national elections set for October 1947, the leftist win in Sicily created speculation that a coalition led by Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.-Early life:...
might bring Italy under Communist rule. In Sicily, the communist leader on Sicily, Girolamo Li Causi
Girolamo Li Causi
Girolamo Li Causi was a Sicilian Communist leader. As a Sicilian and communist he was actively involved in the post war struggle against the Mafia...
, pledged to redistribute large land holdings, but to preserve any of 100 hectares (247 acres) or less.
The massacre
Piana degli Albanesi
Piana degli Albanesi is a comune with 6,427 inhabitants in the Province of Palermo, Sicily.The town is the most important and populous Arbëreshë community in Sicily and it is the episcopal see of the Byzantine Catholic Church...
on the way to San Giuseppe Jato
San Giuseppe Jato
San Giuseppe Jato is a village in the Province of Palermo in Sicily, southern Italy.The village sits in a hilly region of Palermo's hinterland, 31 km from the Sicilian capital.-History:...
for the traditional international Labour Day parade. At 10:15 a.m., the Communist party secretary from Piana degli Albanesi began to address the crowd when gunfire broke out. It was later determined that machine guns had been fired from the surrounding hills, as well as by men on horseback. Eleven people were killed, including four children, Serafino Lascari (15), Giovanni Grifò (12), Giuseppe Di Maggio and Vincenzo La Fata, both seven years old. Thirty-three people were wounded, including a little girl who had her jaw shot off.
The attack was attributed to the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano
Salvatore Giuliano
Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian peasant. It has been suggested that the subjugated social status of his class led him to become a bandit and separatist. He was mythologised during his life and after his death...
. His aim had been to punish local leftists for the recent election results. In an open letter he took sole responsibility for the murders and claimed that he had only wanted his men to fire above the heads of the crowd; the deaths had been a mistake.
Until the massacre, Giuliano had been regarded by many as a modern day Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
who stole from (and even kidnapped) wealthy Sicilians to help the impoverished Sicilians. The shooting of children and peasant at Ginestra, however, outraged his former admirers, and a bounty of three million lire ($13,200 in 1947) was offered by the Italian government for Giuliano's capture.
The massacre created a national scandal. The Communist-controlled Italian General Confederation of Labour
Italian General Confederation of Labour
-External links:**...
called a general strike in protest against the massacre. The Minister of the Interior, the Christian Democrat Mario Scelba
Mario Scelba
Mario Scelba was an Italian Christian Democratic politician who served as the 34th Prime Minister of Italy from February 1954 to July 1955...
, reported to Parliament the next day that so far as the police could determine, the Portella della Ginestra shooting was non-political. Bandits notoriously infested the valley in which it occurred, said Scelba. Li Causi disagreed and charged that the Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
had perpetrated the attack, in cahoots with the large landowners, monarchists and the rightist Uomo Qualunque Front
Uomo Qualunque Front
The Front of the Ordinary Man was a short-lived populist libertarian and poujadist party in Italy...
. The debate ended in a fist fight between the left and the right. Nearly 200 deputies took part in the brawl.
Denouncing the massacre
Gaspare Pisciotta
Gaspare Pisciotta was a companion and close friend of the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano, and considered to be the co-leader of his outlaw band.- Origins :...
and other remaining members of Giuliano’s gang. While Scelba dismissed any political motive, Li Causi stressed the political nature of the massacre – and tried to uncover the truth. Li Causi claimed that the police inspector Ettore Messana – supposed to coordinate the persecution of the bandits – had been in league with Giuliano and denounced Scelba for allowing Messana to remain in office. Later documents would prove the accusation.
Li Causi suspected a campaign against the left and linked it with the crisis in the national government (under Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi
Alcide De Gasperi
Alcide De Gasperi was an Italian statesman and politician and founder of the Christian Democratic Party. From 1945 to 1953 he was the prime minister of eight successive coalition governments. His eight-year rule remains a landmark of political longevity for a leader in modern Italian politics...
), which would lead to the expulsion of the communists and socialist from government, as well as to prevent the left from entering the regional government. On May 30, 1947, Giuseppe Alessi
Giuseppe Alessi
Giuseppe Alessi is an Italian footballer who currently plays midfielder in Lega Pro Prima Divisione for Reggiana.Alessi started his career at Torino. Then he played for S.S.C. Napoli, before joining Spezia Calcio.-External links:...
, became the first president of the Sicilian region with the support of the centre right and the same day De Gasperi announced his new centrist government, who had been in the national union governments since 1945.
Challenging Giuliano
Li Causi responded by reminding Giuliano that he would almost certainly be betrayed: "Don’t you understand that Scelba will have you killed." Giuliano again replied, hinting at the powerful secrets that he possessed:
Salvatore Giuliano was killed on July 5, 1950, when the hearings for the trial against Giuliano’s captured associates started in Viterbo
Viterbo
See also Viterbo, Texas and Viterbo UniversityViterbo is an ancient city and comune in the Lazio region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo. It is approximately 80 driving / 80 walking kilometers north of GRA on the Via Cassia, and it is surrounded by the Monti Cimini and...
, near Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. He always denied that there had been anyone behind him who had ordered the killing. However, his lieutenant Pisciotta and other witnesses claimed that a few days before the massacre, on April 27, 1947, Giuliano had received a letter, which he destroyed immediately after reading it. He told his band: “Boys, the hour of our liberation is at hand.” According to the witnesses, the letter demanded the massacre at Portella delle Ginestra in exchange for liberty for all of the band.
Viterbo trial
The trial against the perpetrators for the massacre started in the summer of 1950 in ViterboViterbo
See also Viterbo, Texas and Viterbo UniversityViterbo is an ancient city and comune in the Lazio region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo. It is approximately 80 driving / 80 walking kilometers north of GRA on the Via Cassia, and it is surrounded by the Monti Cimini and...
. Scelba was again said to have been involved in the plot to carry out the massacre, but the accusations were often contradictionary or vague. In the end the judge concluded that no higher authority had ordered the massacre, and that the Giuliano band had acted autonomously. At the Viterbo trial Pisciotta said:
Pisciotta also claimed that he had killed the bandit Salvatore Giuliano
Salvatore Giuliano
Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian peasant. It has been suggested that the subjugated social status of his class led him to become a bandit and separatist. He was mythologised during his life and after his death...
in his sleep by arrangement with Scelba. However, there was no evidence that Scelba had had any relationship with Pisciotta.
At the trial for the Portella della Ginestra massacre, Gaspare Pisciotta
Gaspare Pisciotta
Gaspare Pisciotta was a companion and close friend of the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano, and considered to be the co-leader of his outlaw band.- Origins :...
said:
Witnesses disappear
Pisciotta was sentenced to life in imprisonment and forced labour; most of the other 70 bandits met the same fate. Others were at large, but one by one they all disappeared. Pisciotta probably was the only one who could reveal the truth behind the massacre. While he was in Giuliano’s band, he carried a pass signed by a colonel of the Carabinieri that allowed him to move freely about the island. At the trial he declared, "We are one body: bandits, police and Mafia – like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."While serving his sentence he wrote his autobiography awaiting a new trial at which he would be charged with killing Giuliano. Some authorities were beginning to take his evidence more serious, and perjury
Perjury
Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the witness falsely promises to tell the truth about matters which affect the outcome of the...
and other charges were made against police and Carabinieri. Pisciotta realised that he had been abandoned and was threatening to reveal much more than at the first trial, in particular who signed the letter which had been brought to Giuliano just before the attack. On February 9, 1954, he took a cup of coffee with what he thought was a tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
medicine. Instead someone had replaced it with strychnine
Strychnine
Strychnine is a highly toxic , colorless crystalline alkaloid used as a pesticide, particularly for killing small vertebrates such as birds and rodents. Strychnine causes muscular convulsions and eventually death through asphyxia or sheer exhaustion...
. Within an hour he was dead and his autobiography disappeared.
The massacre created a national scandal, which ended in 1956 with the conviction of the remaining members of Giuliano's band. It still remains a highly controversial topic. The finger of blame has been pointed at numerous sources, including the Italian government. Leftists who were the victims of the attack have blamed the landed baron
Baron
Baron is a title of nobility. The word baron comes from Old French baron, itself from Old High German and Latin baro meaning " man, warrior"; it merged with cognate Old English beorn meaning "nobleman"...
s and the Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
; significantly, the memorial plaque erected by them makes no mention of Giuliano or his band:
While some historians see the massacre as a conspiracy of the Mafia, anti-communist political forces – the Christian-Democratic party in particular – and American intelligence services in the wake of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, others consider the bloodbath as the culmination of local struggles for land rights and land reform in the area of Piana degli Albanesi
Piana degli Albanesi
Piana degli Albanesi is a comune with 6,427 inhabitants in the Province of Palermo, Sicily.The town is the most important and populous Arbëreshë community in Sicily and it is the episcopal see of the Byzantine Catholic Church...
and San Giuseppe Jato
San Giuseppe Jato
San Giuseppe Jato is a village in the Province of Palermo in Sicily, southern Italy.The village sits in a hilly region of Palermo's hinterland, 31 km from the Sicilian capital.-History:...
. Just as at the end of World War I, the post-war period saw an increase of violence between landowners backed by the Mafia and left-wing peasant movements. A few weeks before the massacre, the local Mafia boss of Piana, Francesco Cuccia
Francesco Cuccia
Francesco Cuccia, also known as Don Ciccio, was a member of the Sicilian Mafia and one-time mayor of Piana dei Greci . He is best known as the Mafia boss who triggered Benito Mussolini’s war on the Mafia, after humiliating the Duce while visiting Piana dei Greci in 1924...
, and others had asked landowners for money to "put an end to the communists once and for all." They made clear that they were ready to go beyond the traditional acts of Mafia violence that had been used against the socialist peasant movement before the rise of fascism in the early 1920s when six socialist militants had been killed in Piana.
Film depictions
Salvatore GiulianoSalvatore Giuliano (film)
Salvatore Giuliano is a 1962 Italian film directed by Francesco Rosi. Shot in a neo-realist documentary, non-linear style, it follows the lives of those involved with the famous Sicilian bandit, Salvatore Giuliano...
is a 1962 Italian film directed by Francesco Rosi
Francesco Rosi
Francesco Rosi is an Italian film director. He is the father of actress Carolina Rosi.-Biography:After studying Law, but hoping to study film, Rosi entered the industry as an assistant to Luchino Visconti on La Terra trema...
. Shot in a neo-realist documentary, non-linear style, it follows the lives of those involved with Giuliano. When Rosi came to Sicily in 1961 to re-enact the Portella Della Ginestra sequence massacre for the film, the trauma from 14 years earlier was still fresh. He asked 1,000 peasants to go back and enact exactly what they, their friends and relatives had been through. Events nearly slipped out of control. When the gunfire sound effects started, the crowd panicked and knocked over one of the cameras in rush to escape; women wept and knelt in prayer; men threw themselves to the ground in agony. One old woman, dressed entirely in black, planted herself before the camera and repeated in an anguished wail, 'Where are my children?' Two of her sons had died at the hands of Giuliano and his band.
Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for writing and directing Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven's Gate. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject...
's 1987 version, a film adaptation of Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo
Mario Gianluigi Puzo was an American author and screenwriter, known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather , which he later co-adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola...
's The Sicilian
The Sicilian (film)
The Sicilian is a 1987 action film based on the novel of the same name by Mario Puzo. It was directed by Michael Cimino and stars Christopher Lambert, Joss Ackland and Terence Stamp.-Plot:...
, was filmed instead at Sutera
Sutera
Sutera is a comune in the Province of Caltanissetta in the Italian region Sicily, located about 70 km southeast of Palermo and about 30 km west of Caltanissetta. The area is dominated by a large monolithic rock termed "The Mountain of San Paolino". Upon this mountain sits the bones of...
and Caltanissetta
Caltanissetta
Caltanissetta is a city and comune located on the western interior of Sicily, capital of the province of Caltanissetta...
. The massacre was also depicted in 2009 in Giuseppe Tornatore
Giuseppe Tornatore
-Life and career:Born in Bagheria near Palermo, Tornatore developed an interest in acting and the theatre from at least the age of 16 and put on works by Luigi Pirandello and Eduardo De Filippo.He worked initially as a freelance photographer...
's film Baarìa – La porta del vento.
Sources
- Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet ISBN 0-340-82435-2
- Hobsbawm, Eric J. (1971). Primitive rebels; studies in archaic forms of social movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, Manchester University Press, ISBN 9780719004933 Petrotta, Francesco (2010). La strage e i depistaggi: Il castello d’ombre su Portella della Ginestra, Rome: Ediesse, ISBN 88-230-1396-4
- Servadio, Gaia (1976), Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day, London: Secker & Warburg ISBN 0-436-44700-2