Under the Olive Tree (1950) User Reviews

Olive trees, sheep, and revenge in Calabria.

[ItalianGerry · 21 February 2005]

This movie, whose title translates as "There is no peace amid the olive trees" was for a time considered one of the important films of the neo-realist period, although quite secondary in relation to the masterpieces of Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti. The movie was directed by Giuseppe De Santis after his international hit "Bitter Rice," but it never saw the same kind of success.

Raf Vallone plays Francesco Dominici, a shepherd and war veteran who returns home to find that his flock of sheep have been stolen by the area thuggish big-shot landlord Agostino Bonfiglio. Francesco decides to steal back what is rightfully his, and winds up in jail, through a series of manipulations and witness bribes by Agostino, who claims the sheep were always his. To make matters worse, when Francesco is in prison, Agostino manages to also steal Francesco's girl Lucia (Lucia Bosè.) When Agostino escapes from, he attempts to exact revenge on Agostino. The townspeople turn against Agostino There is an eventual final shoot-out in the manner of a good-guys/bad-guys American western, which, minus the horses, this film resembles. Hmmmm! Alan Ladd as Francesco, Jack Palance as Agostino? Cornered and unmasked as the true villain he is, Agostino does himself in by plunging into a ravine. Francesco is taken by the police again, but after they realize the probable injustice the guy had suffered, a new trial is promised for the sheep-theft and it seems that Francesco is likely to be exonerated, with the townspeople now willing to vouch for him, and he gets the girl too.

The tone and tenure of this film are very weighty, even ponderous, and the dialog is declamatory in style. De Santis wants to create the weight of a Greek tragedy, complete with the towns people acting as a continuous chorus. There is also a very unsubtle Marxist subtext (De Santis was a Communist), with Agostino symbolizing the bloodsucking owner /landlord class and poor Agostino and his like seen as victims of people like him. One of the lines reflects communist ideology of the "only if we are all united can we succeed" kind and gives a hint of the vast post-war turmoil of 1948 between the Italian right and left. Shepherds and their greedy landlords are to be taken as a microcosm of the Italian people confronted by the larger social and class issues of the times.

The photography by Piero Poratlupi is very stark and given to editing techniques and startling compositions typical of Soviet directors like Dovzhenko and Eisenstein. The music by Goffredo Petrassi further brings a heavy-handed veneer to the whole piece.

While re-watching this movie I thought of Raf Vallone's very similar postwar-revenge role in Curzio Malaparte's "Forbidden Christ." The plot also resembles that of Vittorio De Seta's 1961 film about a desperate Sardinian shepherd trying to avenge a wrong, "Bandits of Orgosolo." While not a masterpiece, "Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi" really does have a great deal of interest and melodramatic force and it ought to be better known.

Love, Greed and Revenge under the olive trees

[andrabem-1 · 10/10 · 30 August 2009]

"Non c'é pace tra gli ulivi" (No peace under the olive tree) is a powerful neorealist film. It was filmed in natural locations in the mountains of Ciociaria (the homeland of Giuseppe De Santis).. The landscape and people mix harmoniously together in this film that tells a story as old as humanity itself. The rocky mountainous landscape adds an epic scope and an exquisite beauty to the film.

"Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi" tells a story of revenge and solidarity – A shepherd, Francesco (Ralf Vallone) after spending three years in the war (World War 2) and still more three years in jail, returns home. His old parents and sister had been left by themselves. A unscrupulous shepherd, Bonfiglio (Folco Lulli) had taken advantage of the state of chaos generated by the war to steal the flock of sheep that belonged to Francesco's family, leaving them destitute. And Bonfiglio doesn't stop at that – by way of threats and cajolery he forces Lucia, Francesco's fiancée, (Lucia Bosè) to marry him. Bonfiglio is a man on the rise, slowly imposing his will on the other shepherds – stealing, threatening and using force when necessary.

Francesco on his return finds his family completely impoverished, barely having enough to eat and his fiancée taken away by Bonfiglio (the same man that had stolen his family's flock of sheep!). But Francesco is not one of those men who put up with trouble without taking action. What will he do?

As you can see by my introduction, the story of the film is highly melodramatic, and the acting is also a bit exaggerated, but strangely enough this doesn't spoil the film, it rather stresses the strength of the story. The actors, the landscape and a story that seems to be taken from a Greek tragedy lend this film something almost cosmic and also very humanistic. Giuseppe De Santis's passion for his homeland and its people are shown in full force in "Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi".

Certainly "Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi" may not be not as truthful to reality as other neorealist films. Professional actors star in the main roles. Raf Vallone as Francesco and Lucia Bose (that two years earlier had been elected Miss Italy) could stand up as models for Latin beauty. And even Folco Lulli as the villain doesn't lose his humanity. In fact, one could say that "Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi " stems from the same sources that gave us Homer and Virgil. Following the classic patterns of the old masters, an old story of passion, greed and revenge is told.

The landscape, the dances of the shepherds, the songs, Lucia Bosè's beauty against the backdrop of the steep and rocky mountains of Ciociaria... enough said! "Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi" as well as other neorealist films of the time (for example, the classic "Riso Amaro" also directed by De Santis) caused a deep impression all around the world. Lima Barreto, a great Brazilian filmmaker, showed in "O Cangaceiro", filmed in 1953, that he had learned a thing or two with the Italian neorealist films.

Local rivalry between shepherds reaching critical levels

[clanciai · 9/10 · 10 April 2024]

Why was this film not as successful as de Santis' previous film "Riso amaro" ("Bitter rice" with Silvana Mangano)? She was booked also for this film but got pregnant which made her appearance impossible. This is a similar story about simple local people working hard for their daily bread, but the three leading actors are all professionals, and their performances are not quite natural. They try to appear convincingly local, but there is something stilted about their over-acting. The cinematographic character of this film is very like the technique of the silent films, the characters being given unnecessarily monumental emphasis, while the great merit of the film is the many various local scenes of dancing and making merry, the bother about all the sheep, there are goats also adding to the confusion, the local colours are excellent and oustanding, but the melodrama is exaggerated - you miss here the Vittorio de Sica human touch, to make the drama gripping. Instead there is just a provisional happy ending.