Vittorio de Seta's documentary shorts play like home movies from antiquity. Presented by Martin Scorsese and screened publicly for the first time ever in the United States at Full Frame, these films capture life lived close to the elements in southern Italy in the 1950s, a way of life that is increasingly lost today.
These are not romantic stories. Adhering to the strict chronological structure of classical Greek drama, in each the day begins. Wheat is harvested. Sulphur mined. Tuna caught. Easter celebrated. Night falls, and the people rest so they may begin again. Always there is music. The ritualistic motions of these people in labor have been traced by generations, long before de Seta's cameras were there to capture it in glorious Technicolor and Cinescope vistas.
Danger is never far away. In a suspenseful moment worthy of Rififi, miners pause in painful silence, fearing another collapse 1500 feet below the ground. Such catastrophes often killed 20 to 30 men at a time in the Mafia-run and distinctly unsafe sulfur mines. In another film, fishermen draw their nets ever tauter, bringing enormous struggling tuna to the surface, where two men at a time grab one, gut it, and pull the tuna past their shoulders and into a hold full of lurid red blood and silvery flailing fish.
At Full Frame, Scorsese presented seven of these shorts and discussed each in turn with Sicilian director de Seta through a translator. [Man, is the cinetrix's Italian rusty]. We heard about Scorsese's own Sicilian immigrant grandparents, who continued their traditional ways of life within a Little Italy enclave. At times, de Seta turned tables on Signore Scorsese, at one point mischieveously asking about the violenza in his films.
Salvo Cuccia's documentary, Detour De Seta, and de Seta's first fiction feature, Banditi a Orgosolo, also played at Full Frame. If you want to catch a glimpse of de Seta's amazing films, Detour will screen next at Tribeca on April 23 alongside these shorts. De Seta's second full-length feature, Un Uomo a Meta, plays on Sunday, April 24.
Banditi a Orgosolo plays at MoMA tonight, April 14, at 8 p.m., and will be introduced by de Seta.
The cinetrix was extremely fortunate to attend a press conference with Scorsese while at Full Frame. While no one had the temerity to ask about his relationship with executive director of the festival Nancy Buirski [rumor is they dated back in the cocaine era], Scorsese had no end of things to say about any number of topics. Surprise, surprise. Here are some fun facts to close out my Full Frame coverage:
- Scorsese considered shooting Taxi Driver on black and white video for financial reasons.
- "The way I speak has a lot to do with my asthma medication as a kid.... That stuff'll shoot you through the roof."
- Scorsese got a B on a paper he wrote about The Third Man while at NYU. His professor, a big advocate of documentary, told him: "Remember, it's just a thriller."
- He studied paper prints from the Library of Congress [used to file copyright] to gather period detail, such as the ill-fitting way clothing hung on people, for The Age of Innocence. [NB: The recently rediscovered Valentino/Swanson film Beyond the Rocks was restored with the aid of paper prints.]
- At least two major studios are now creating digital original elements of films from their libraries and pitching out the nitrates.
UPDATE: Here's the order for the Tribeca screening of de Seta's shorts. Pescherecci is the one about il tonno.
7 Shorts by Vittorio de Seta will screen on the program with the film Detour de Seta
Time of the Swordfish (Lu tempu d li pisci spata) - 1954, 10 min.
Islands of Fire (Isole di fuoco) - 1954, 11 min.
Sulphur Mine (Surfarara) - 1955, 10 min.
Easter in Sicily (Pasqua in Sicilia) - 1955, 11 min.
Peasants of the Sea (Contadini del mare) 1955, 10 min.
Golden Parable (Parabola d'oro) - 1955, 10 min.
Fishing Boats (Pescherecci) - 1958, 10 min.
Program runtime 127 min
Saturday, April 23, 2:30 p.m., PACE
