Cinema audiences in Sapporo have a busy Golden Weekend: we have to go see one of the great European films from the 1970s. "Sacco and Vanzetti" is based on real events in Massachusetts about 100 years ago. Two innocent Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were wrongly arrested after a robbery and murder in April 1920. The two men were Socialists, they spoke broken English, and were unable to prove their innocence.
To be anti-war, a pacifist, Socialist or Communist in the USA, it required some courage at that time. A racist judge and ten white men jury, anti-immigrant feeling among the public, and soon the court's terrible verdict was that the two Italians would die in the electric chair… Truly an outrageous sequence of events.
In Vanzetti's final words, he says he doesn't want to live in such a world. But his name lives on, in our world today, 97 years after his death… In fact, the names of these two very average hard-working immigrants are now forever linked together: they are not Nicola the shoemaker, and Bartolomeo the fish salesman... They will forever be, only, always, forever, "Sacco and Vanzetti".
The film features a quiet sympathetic soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, and two songs by the great 1960s protest singer-songwriter Joan Baez. At the Satsu Geki cinema, you can see a beautiful new 4K remastered 35mm print. This is a film that reminds you how fragile are justice and freedom; everything that we love and treasure is actually hanging by a thread..
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