Vittorio De Seta's BANDITS OF ORGOSOLO is a remarkable and relentless film set in a remote Sardinian village and surrounding areas and cast with local non-professional actors. The movie has all the makings of a quasi-documentary, in the tradition of Flaherty's MAN OF ARAN where men are struggling against the elemental forces of nature as much as with each other. (The film,in fact, won the revered Flaherty Award.) It is a brilliantly photographed film, with lyric and evocative visual poetry, beautifully realized, with few false notes. The harshness of the environment and the misery of the inhabitants of the area create a film that is austere, unrelenting, and utterly truthful. As might be expected this uncompromising movie failed abysmally at the box office.
