Toth Database - Cinema 

1860 Garibaldi's thousand

Plot

In Sicily the 1860 awaiting the announced arrival of the Liberator Garibaldi, the insurgents of the Sicilian countryside suffer harsh repression of the Bourbon army. Il picciotto Careliddu is sent by villagers on the continent to meet Colonel Campbell, who had participated in the Sicilian revolution of 1848 which is located in Genoa, with Garibaldi, to request an intervention whose delay may be fatal to the rebels. Must therefore abandon the army Gesuzza who, in his absence, is captured and risks avoided shooting only temporarily for a royal amnesty. Carmeliddu reaches Civitavecchia and continue by train to Genoa, encountering people who support different locations on the Italian political situation and that allow them to discover the existence of a broad debate with him as yet unknown. There, he meets cute and assists, helpless and with growing concern, the difficulties of the construction of the military expedition, which at one point also seems to be abandoned.Finally, overcome obstacles, on 5 may the Mille expedition starts from Fourth. On boats, along with Carmeliddu, there are some of the people of different political ideas encountered during the trip, which now have decided to act and United under the leadership of Garibaldi. After landing in Marsala, the thousand advance quickly in Sicily and Carmeliddu succeeds, she visited and embrace his Gesuzza, safe and sound, before participating in the battle of Calatafimi.

During the making of the film, there were many doubts in choosing the title. 

The simple 1860 seemed too hermetic, 1860, Garibaldi, Italy were also hypothesized Calatafimi, and The Red wave (the latter immediately rejected, for the obvious and unfortunate evocation politics; in the movie the red shirts are not never even mentioned. The subject of the film was inspired by a story by Gino Mazzucchi, centered on a procession, then significantly resized in the final screenplay. An important role in the process of writing was also played by Emilio Cecchi, who counseled Blasetti perusing the Noterelle d'uno dei Mille edite after twenty years of Giuseppe Cesare Abba, who were determined to set the overall tone of the film. 1860 falls within the context of a regime that, through film, attempting to build a memory and act as the point of arrival of the country's history. Starting in 1929, after the publication of the history of Italy from 1871 to 1915 by Benedetto Croce, fascism tries to cast himself as a natural heir of the Risorgimento. Between 1929 and 1943, over 720 movies produced, of which about 130 historians, in fact they are fifteen are set during the Risorgimento. For Alessandro Blasetti movie historian was essentially political, was to enact the past to speak of this, for the sake of propaganda. About 1860 he expressed explicitly in this sense: the Film in two words would be this. Evoke the atmosphere of 1860 in many respects similar to that of 1920-1922. Torrents of chatter, political Tower of Babel, recklessness of immanent ruin any chance of Homeland Union. Isolated nuclei Patriots and rebels muti, resolute, devoted to death resisting in the confidence of a man that he will convey their forces and others will draw current from the policy debate that will lead inevitably to that of action. In fact the film is not crudely propagandist or bent to the regime as stated, except for the final contemporary setting of the original version, then cut in 1951 reissue, which shows a parade of fascist phalanx before the backdrop of veterans garibaldini foro Mussolini. The film shows a rural Sicily in which pastors who fight with dignity and courage to break free from the oppressor are joined by a single faith and one language, language and political convictions against the chaos that reigns on the continent; soldiers not Bourbon are Italians, but German-speaking Swiss, foreigners are enemies with whom there is no possibility of communication, redemption of Italy can come only by the Italians. Blasetti chooses not to make a hero Garibaldi romance, protagonist of the story, but to show it or do it for a few seconds glimpse in the entire movie, in just six Rapids shots, in the medical field or long, making it a looming demiurge. The only time he talks, a PEP talk during the battle of Calatafimi, is out of range and are framed men who listen to him and show their reactions to his words. The movie, released in theaters in March 1934, he was warmly welcomed by the critics, but was snubbed by the public, for the narrative point of view "objective", the absence of a protagonist with which to identify and popularity of Renaissance theme, and was beloved by official circles of the regime, because little celebratory and too anti-rhetoric. It was released in the United States in November 1936, under the title Gesuzza the Garibaldian Wife (Gesuzza Garibaldi's wife). It was republished in 1951, with a new title, the thousands of Garibaldi, a new Dub, new music and free of fascist scene finale.