Italian director Francesco Rosi established his reputation with this deeply unsettling investigative portrait about a notorious Sicilian bandit that’s rightly recognised as a groundbreaking work of both political and Italian filmmaking.

July 5, 1950—Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano’s bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard in Castelvetrano, a handgun and rifle by his side. Who killed him, and why? Local and international press have descended upon the scene, hoping to crack open the true story behind the death of this young man, who, at the age of 27, had already become Italy’s most wanted criminal and celebrated hero. Despite his near-total absence from the screen throughout, a series of flashbacks mean that every frame of the movie is all about this notorious young man known as ‘the Sicilian Robin Hood’ who was, at various times in his turbulent life, a partisan involved in the 1943 liberation of Sicily, a kidnapper, a fighter-for-hire for postwar Sicilian nationalists, a foe of the mafia and, most notoriously, a murderer of Sicilian communists.

Stunningly shot by Gianni di Venanzo (Fellini’s 8½), the film was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Sight & Sound called it “one of the most courageous things that Italian cinema has ever attempted”. Martin Scorsese cited it as one of his twelve favourite films, and we have him to thank as it was his Film Foundation that sponsored the sparkling new 4K restoration by the Cineteca di Bologna. Never shown in the UK on its original release the real crime would be to miss your chance to see it now on the big screen.

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