Christ Stopped at Eboli

This adaptation of Carlo Levi's autobiographical book awkwardly bridges the space between Rosi's justly celebrated political dossier thrillers (The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano, Illustrious Corpses) and his more recent Three Brothers, and has to be counted a major disappointment. Covering the period of Levi's Fascist-imposed exile to the southern Italian region of Lucania in the '30s, Rosi ditches analysis to allow the desolate landscapes and faces of a remote peasant culture (seen as somehow beyond ideology) to tell their own tale. An unfortunate tendency to sentimentalise mars even this limited schema, though, and Volonté's suitably humbled Levi is even followed around by a Disneyesque dog.