Yukiba Review of Placido Rizzotto

Placido Rizzotto (2000)

The movie tells the story of Placido Rizzotto and his murder.

[25 January 2006]

The movie tells the story of Placido Rizzotto and his murder. The movie is based on a true story, however this story was hardly known before the release of this movie. Rizzotto was born in a peasant's family. The movie begins with the arrest of the father of an eleven year old Rizzotto. His father was arrested by Mori's men and thus in the fascism era. His father spent a year and a half in prison and during this time Placido had to take care of his family. In the following scene we see Rizzotto as a young man fighting in the World War II against the Nazi. He was a partisan and in these scenes we see him trying to stop fellow partisans from being hanged. After the war Rizzotto returns to Corleone in Sicily. He becomes secretary of the trade union and was involved in the fight for land for the peasants. Rizzotto used to urge the peasants to fight for the land and occupy the unused land. This however led to his death. Rizzotto was killed at the age of 34. In the scene when Rizzotto is urging the peasants, we have the use of the cross-cutting technique. On one hand we have Rizzotto urging the peasants to fight for the land and simultaneously in a different location we see the scene in which a group of mafia are discussing whether to kill Rizzotto or not. The most important scene in this movie is the scene in which we see Rizzotto's mother crying over the invisible corpse. Rizzotto's corpse was never found. We see the figure of Placido Rizzotto's mother crying over some items that belonged to her son. The invisible corpse is what dominates the whole scene.