Abstract

This essay provides a conceptual map of the relationship 
between One Hundred Steps (2000), its precursors and contemporaries, and in doing so
 analyzes the innovative nature of Marco Tullio Giordana’s authorship. Giordana brought
 his crew on location and established a relationship with the citizens of
 Cinisi, Peppino’s friends, mother and brother, interviewing witnesses to
 the events and modifying the screenplay accordingly. In this sense, his film
 displays the legacy of early neorealism (particularly The
 Earth Trembles, Luchino Visconti’s 1948 ethnographic expedition
in Sicily) and that of Francesco Rosi, whose 1963 Hands over
the City is openly evoked. In addition, I claim that in order to understand the film, one needs to take 
into account the American mafia portrayal by directors such as Martin
 Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. While Peppino emphasized the difference 
between himself and the mafia in his town by refusing to cross a short 
distance, Peppino’s father travels enormous distances in his attempt to 
reconcile the situation back at home, a subtle indication in the film of both
 the mafia’s global reach and how close family ties do not fade across
 continents. Giordana’s cinematic re-assertion of both Sicilian heritage and
 US film is consistent with the film’s narrative and with his choice to 
demonstrate, retrospectively, how the town of Cinisi’s mafia crime trade
 was an early example of globalization. Not by chance, there is a particular 
emphasis on the new spatial relationships created by the airport and the mode
 of exploitation it represents (in some sequences Peppino fights the
expropriation of the farmers’ land for the construction of the third
 runway). It is in front of such modified spatial relationships that Peppino
 comments upon how such constructions alter the landscape, delivering his 
famous lyrical monologue: “You can find logic for anything once it’s 
done, once it exists…it takes so very little to destroy
 beauty.” One Hundred Steps oscillates
between the two poles of documentary and fiction, creating a new  hybrid aesthetic that reveals to be seminal in the new
millennium.

This article has been published in the volume The Cinema of Marco Tullio Giordana (Editore Vecchiarelli, 2015)

The work of Italian film director Marco Tullio Giordana has recently become the subject of academic attention. Major scholars in the field of Italian Studies have expressed interest in his work in articles, book chapters and presentations. His films are constantly screened at Italian film festivals. A comprehensive evaluation of Giordana’s work is therefore needed in the field of Italian film studies, if only because his work demonstrates that the claim of a crisis of Italian cinema is not justified. Through the volume we explore and analyze the multifarious nature of Giordana’s cinematic production as well as its critical/crucial role in the representation of Italian cultural history.