Synopsis
Sacco & Vanzetti (1971) is an Italian-French historical drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Giuliano Montaldo and built around the seven-year American legal ordeal that provoked protests on five continents. Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler — both Italian immigrants and self-declared anarchists — were charged with robbery and murder in Boston in 1920.
The evidence against them was thin. What was not thin was the anti-radical hysteria gripping the United States in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and Massachusetts authorities saw an opportunity. The trial became a political spectacle dragged out through appeals, public campaigns and international outcry until 1927, when both men were executed. Gian Maria Volonté plays Sacco; Riccardo Cucciolla, who took Best Actor at Cannes for the role, plays Vanzetti with quiet, devastating dignity.
Montaldo does not pretend to neutrality, and the film is stronger for it — a blunt political indictment rather than a courtroom procedural. Ennio Morricone's score turns the whole thing into something closer to a requiem. Stream Sacco & Vanzetti (1971) online on iFILM.
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