This film is not about any aspect of human activity which is particular to Italian life. It is about the prevalence of greed and corruption over the human being and society anywhere. In this sense its value is universal - not limited to Italy. One of its strong points is precisely that it is not focused on an individual family's drama. Such focus often moves in a very superficial way - it turns the universal problem into one family's problem (and if it could be solved everything would be fine). Take a movie like "Ace in the hole". An outstanding movie, one of the best of its kind and its time (maybe of all time) and a good example of the human-focused view. You empathise with the victim, you rebel against the man (KD) but otherwise this can still be the best of all possible worlds. Not so in any of the films of Rosi. Rosi, in this more than in any other of his films, puts the collective problem, as well as the collective responsibility so clearly and so strongly to the fore that I believe this to be, maybe, the best political film of its kind ever made.
Review of Hands Over the City
