Salvatore Giuliano

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antnield
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Salvatore Giuliano

#1 Post by antnield » Thu May 22, 2014 4:43 am

Image

5 July 1950. Salvatore Giuliano, Italy’s most wanted criminal, is found shot dead in a dusty courtyard. Who killed him, and why? And who was he?

The film that made Francesco Rosi’s international reputation, this Citizen Kane-style investigative portrait was originally called Sicily 1943-60, as Rosi sought not so much to depict Giuliano himself as the society from which he sprang, in which the police, the carabinieri and the Mafia all have strong vested interests. Filming in the exact locations and utilising court reports as primary source material, Rosi mainly cast local Sicilians, some of whom knew Giuliano personally. The only professional actors were Frank Wolff (Once Upon a Time in the West) and Salvo Randone (L’Assassino).

Stunningly shot by Gianni di Venanzo (Fellini’s ), the film was immediately hailed as a masterpiece, with Sight & Sound calling it “one of the most courageous things the Italian cinema has ever attempted”. More recently, Martin Scorsese cited it as one of his twelve favourite films, and his Film Foundation sponsored this sparkling new 4K restoration by the Cineteca di Bologna.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:

• New 4K digital restoration from the Cineteca di Bologna;
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the film;
• Uncompressed Mono 2.0 PCM Audio;
The Filmmaker and the Labyrinth, Roberto Andò’s documentary study of Francesco Rosi’s career featuring the filmmaker himself, Martin Scorsese and Giuseppe Tornatore among others;
Francesco Rosi on Salvatore Giuliano, a new and exclusive interview with the great Italian director;
The Sicilian Robin Hood, an interview with Salvatore Giuliano’s nephew Giuseppe;
Salvatore Giuliano and the Mafia, an interview with journalist and Sicilian Mafia expert Attilio Bolzoni;
• Theatrical Trailer;
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw;
• Booklet featuring new writing on the film by Pasquale Iannone, an annotated synopsis by Ben Lawton, plus a selection of contemporary reviews.

Dual-format release: September 15th

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ellipsis7
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#2 Post by ellipsis7 » Thu May 22, 2014 7:07 am

Really excellent news... Another marvellous piece of work by the great Italian cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo... (now we are blessed with BRs of HD restos of his superb craft on SALVATORE GIUILIANO , MOMENT OF TRUTH, LE MANI SULLA CITTA, 8 1/2, L'ECLISSE, LA NOTTE, LE AMICHE, L'AMORE IN CITTA, LA DECIMA VITTIMA & LA SFIDA)...

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Drucker
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#3 Post by Drucker » Thu May 22, 2014 7:10 am

Still need to pick up MoC's Hands Over The City and will be happy to buy this upgrade from Arrow.

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GaryC
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#4 Post by GaryC » Fri May 23, 2014 2:46 pm

Was this really never released in the UK? It's reviewed in the June 1963 Monthly Film Bulletin, which lists its distributor as Gala. It's also on the BBFC database, as being given an X certificate in December 1962.

I saw the BBC2 showing in 1985. The film will gain on being seen on a larger screen than I had available then - if I remember rightly, it's filmed almost entirely in medium/long shot.
Last edited by GaryC on Fri May 23, 2014 7:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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colinr0380
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#5 Post by colinr0380 » Fri May 23, 2014 4:43 pm


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olmo
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#6 Post by olmo » Wed Jul 16, 2014 1:35 pm

colinr0380 wrote:Interestingly it was apparently the BBC's approach to this film and The Mattei Affair that led to Alex Cox leaving Moviedrome back in 1994.
Great article and sadly it's worse then ever. I cut my teeth on foreign film as a teen during Cox's tenure on Moviedrome. Also a great advocate of American independent film; Five Easy Pieces, Electra-glide in Blue, Hopper's 'Out of the Blue' & Tracks were all viewed on BBC2 late slots.

It's so anodyne and safe today, with an overall bias toward catering for the masses. There seem to be a dearth of outlets for challenging cinema on television. Perhaps that is the reason for the likes of Arrow, Eureka, BFI and other BD/DVD retailers seeming to prosper at the moment.

Long may they continue.

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MichaelB
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#7 Post by MichaelB » Tue Aug 19, 2014 12:57 pm

I've just posted full specs at the top of the page.

The documentary is the same one that's on the Criterion DVD - a 55-minute career overview - but the other three video pieces are brand new, shot by Daniel Bird in July on trips to Rome and Montelepre (where the film was largely made).

I'm really pleased with how they turned out: the idea was to parallel the film's own multifaceted approach to its subject by exploring it from three very distinct perspectives (the director, a blood relation of the film's real-life subject, and an expert on the historical/political context), and although I've only seen them in unsubtitled Italian thus far, I think this comes across loud and clear.
colinr0380 wrote:Interestingly it was apparently the BBC's approach to this film and The Mattei Affair that led to Alex Cox leaving Moviedrome back in 1994.
Bearing in mind our recent resurrection of an unbroadcast hour-long interview with Walerian Borowczyk, we actually made enquiries as to whether this Moviedrome intro was still around, but neither Alex Cox nor producer Nick Jones could help - they reckoned that because it would never have moved beyond "unbroadcast rushes" status it probably doesn't exist any more. Unfortunately, we had neither the time nor the budget to do any proper delving (and neither of them work for the BBC any more), so we had to leave it.

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TMDaines
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#8 Post by TMDaines » Wed Aug 20, 2014 8:04 am

Looks like a great job on this. I'll definitely pick this up.

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MichaelB
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#9 Post by MichaelB » Wed Aug 20, 2014 8:25 am

Another bonus, which has been somewhat understated in the specs, is Ben Lawton's annotated analysis of the film's intricate flashback/flashforward structure, which is far and away the most useful crib-sheet that I've ever come across with regard to this particular film. Rosi apparently thought so too.

(It's the middle bit of a much longer essay on the film, which we didn't have space to reproduce in full, but I thought that the scene-by-scene breakdown was so invaluable that I decided to include it separately - with Professor Lawton's enthusiastic consent. Even in excerpted form it tips the scales at nearly 7,000 words.)

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AidanKing
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#10 Post by AidanKing » Thu Aug 21, 2014 6:42 am

I seem to remember that Salvatore Giuliano was shown in BBC2's Film Club in the 1980s, but unfortunately I can't remember who did the introduction. In any event, this looks like a fantastic package: are the extras on both the DVD and the BluRay?

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MichaelB
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#11 Post by MichaelB » Thu Aug 21, 2014 7:31 am

AidanKing wrote:I seem to remember that Salvatore Giuliano was shown in BBC2's Film Club in the 1980s, but unfortunately I can't remember who did the introduction. In any event, this looks like a fantastic package: are the extras on both the DVD and the BluRay?
Yes - both discs are identical in every way apart from the film and the new interviews being in high definition on the Blu-ray.

jlnight
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#12 Post by jlnight » Thu Aug 21, 2014 9:40 am

It was Mike Newell who did the intro to Salvatore Giuliano for The Film Club (23/04/88).


Also thanks for confirming the status of the Moviedrome intro. We assumed that it was all filmed and edited and ready to go (just shelved) but "unbroadcast rushes" suggests it was nowhere near that.

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MichaelB
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#13 Post by MichaelB » Thu Aug 21, 2014 11:03 am

jlnight wrote:Also thanks for confirming the status of the Moviedrome intro. We assumed that it was all filmed and edited and ready to go (just shelved) but "unbroadcast rushes" suggests it was nowhere near that.
I honestly don't know what stage it reached before the plug was pulled.

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MichaelB
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#14 Post by MichaelB » Tue Aug 26, 2014 4:39 pm

I've just transcribed this for the booklet, and thought I might as well share it with you - it's the technical info about the restoration.
Salvatore Giuliano was restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata in association with The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

The digital restoration was carried out starting from the original camera negative and scanned at a 4K resolution.

The full 4K digital restoration included removal of dirt and scratches and image stabilisation. Some sections of the film showed signs of decay and were seriously damaged by mould.

In order to recover the original beauty of the film, the digital grading was executed with particular care using a vintage copy as a reference. Francesco Rosi's contribution was invaluable at this stage. The sound was digitally restored using the original 35mm optical negative. A positive soundtrack was used in sections that were damaged by vinegar syndrome.

Restoration work was completed in December 2013.
In other news, I've just made the very pleasing discovery that Arrow's master for the documentary The Filmmaker and the Labyrinth does not have the obtrusively large burned-in Italian subtitles that Criterion had to put up with (deeply unwillingly, I'm sure) whenever anyone was speaking in English - notably Martin Scorsese and John Turturro. Which was a completely unexpected bonus, as I assumed that this was an unremovable part of the original.

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Altair
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#15 Post by Altair » Wed Aug 27, 2014 5:42 am

Hooray! Does this mean the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (a.k.a the Golden Globes) have actually contribute something meaningful to the history of film by funding this restoration? At any rate, I already have this on pre-order. Very excited to see it.

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MichaelB
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#16 Post by MichaelB » Wed Aug 27, 2014 5:54 am

I suspect the fact that it's one of Scorsese's twelve favourite films might have been a factor here.

Anyway, I watched the BD encode last night, and the transfer looks astonishing - since much of the film was shot outdoors under harsh Sicilian sunlight (and presumably on reasonably slow stock to compensate), the picture is as sharp as a tack, with fine details clearly visible even in the far distance, and the arid, dusty landscapes coming across so powerfully that it was like watching the film for the first time all over again. I'm absolutely thrilled with it, and I can readily see why James White didn't feel the need to do any additional work on it - if only all masters looked this good when first supplied!

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What A Disgrace
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#17 Post by What A Disgrace » Wed Sep 03, 2014 11:27 am

Delayed until the 29th, due to last minute subtitling checks.

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MichaelB
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#18 Post by MichaelB » Wed Sep 03, 2014 12:05 pm

This was a by-product of the master of the big documentary turning out to be entirely textless.

Which was great news for the reasons mentioned above (i.e. burned-in subtitles no longer being present), but posed a new challenge in that all onscreen text had to be recreated from scratch - titles, captions, written quotations, the lot. Which involved a fair amount of extra work (hence the delay), but I'm delighted with the end result.

For instance, film title captions are now fully bilingual, so the subtitles no longer have to break off from dialogue to insert a quick translation; the big Fellini quotation is similarly bilingual, so the text is no longer fighting the subtitles at the bottom; and the Norman Mailer quotation is now in the original English - on the Criterion disc, it's translated into Italian, forcing them to resort to two simultaneous sets of two-line subtitles in order to translate both Mailer and the dialogue in the underlying clip. Best of all, Martin Scorsese now speaks directly to the viewer instead of peering over a fence of large Italian subtitles.

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olmo
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#19 Post by olmo » Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:08 pm

Did this get the 4k restoration due to Scorsese's patronage? I'm wondering on the chances of ever seeing The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano & Illustrious Corpses on Blu-ray.

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MichaelB
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#20 Post by MichaelB » Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:12 pm

olmo wrote:Did this get the 4k restoration due to Scorsese's patronage? I'm wondering on the chances of ever seeing The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano & Illustrious Corpses on Blu-ray.
There are horrendous rights tangles with some of the classic 1970s Rosi titles, which is why they're so elusive. Arrow Academy's label manager is a massive Rosi fan (and Elio Petri too) and would gladly put out more, but the ball's not really in his court right now.

But yes, I suspect Scorsese was quite heavily involved in the selection process, since he's on record as saying that Salvatore Giuliano is one of his dozen favourite films. Little expense seems to have been spared on the restoration - it's the kind of wondrously lustrous creation that makes you wish that all classic films could get the same treatment.

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olmo
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#21 Post by olmo » Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:26 pm

MichaelB wrote:
olmo wrote:Did this get the 4k restoration due to Scorsese's patronage? I'm wondering on the chances of ever seeing The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano & Illustrious Corpses on Blu-ray.
There are horrendous rights tangles with some of the classic 1970s Rosi titles, which is why they're so elusive. Arrow Academy's label manager is a massive Rosi fan (and Elio Petri too) and would gladly put out more, but the ball's not really in his court right now.

But yes, I suspect Scorsese was quite heavily involved in the selection process, since he's on record as saying that Salvatore Giuliano is one of his dozen favourite films. Little expense seems to have been spared on the restoration - it's the kind of wondrously lustrous creation that makes you wish that all classic films could get the same treatment.
Thought as much, as the above titles are (possibly?) the better known of his output. Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is in rights hell limbo too if I'm not mistaken?

It's a shame but I suppose with the advent of Salvatore Giuliano which seems to be very much anticipated, and if successful it could possibly spur Arrow on to further releases. Here's hoping.

Slightly o/t but as you mentioned the lavish treatment of the restoration; A Matter of Life & Death & The Magnificent Ambersons would be an absolute dream.

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MichaelB
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#22 Post by MichaelB » Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:33 pm

olmo wrote:Thought as much, as the above titles are (possibly?) the better known of his output. Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is in rights hell limbo too if I'm not mistaken?
As far as I'm aware it's owned outright by Sony UK, who could decide to sublicence it or release it themselves in a heartbeat - but that particular ball is firmly in their court.
It's a shame but I suppose with the advent of Salvatore Giuliano which seems to be very much anticipated, and if successful it could possibly spur Arrow on to further releases. Here's hoping.
It's not so much a case of spurring Arrow on - I know for a fact that they'd love to do more Rosi and Petri - as coming up with propitious combinations of rights and materials. The ongoing Bologna restoration programme helps enormously with regard to the latter, but the titles still have to be licensable.
Slightly o/t but as you mentioned the lavish treatment of the restoration; A Matter of Life & Death & The Magnificent Ambersons would be an absolute dream.
Those are currently very unlikely to come from Arrow or any UK independent. For starters, Masters of Cinema would have snapped them up years ago if they'd been available - F For Fake wasn't anywhere close to their first-choice Welles (although they were surprised and gratified by its success).

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olmo
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#23 Post by olmo » Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:51 pm

I won't even pretend to know the first thing on the machinations of studios licensing & rights, but is it only apathy or insularity that prevents either releasing these titles or licensing them out to a boutique label at a competitive price? I don't understand the reasoning on leaving them to languish pretty much unseen.

Granted they wouldn't make much money on titles I've mentioned, but any capital they could make, say, on granting rights for a certain title is better than nada!?

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antnield
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#24 Post by antnield » Tue Sep 23, 2014 5:05 pm


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MichaelB
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Re: Salvatore Giuliano

#25 Post by MichaelB » Thu Sep 25, 2014 4:40 am

Rewind:
I feel safe saying that this is another reference quality transfer from the Arrow Academy line. [...] A great film, a technically superb disc, and some quality extras. Highly recommended.

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