New U.S. Release

Sacco and Vanzetti

 (Docu)

By RONNIE SCHEIB

A First Run Features release of a Willow Pond Films production. Produced by Peter Miller, Amy Carey Linton. Executive producer, Jesse Crawford. Directed by Peter Miller.
 
With: Howard Zinn, Nunzio Pernicone, Michael Topp, Lincoln Robbins, Mary Anne Trasciatti, Anton Coppola, Arlo Guthrie, Studs Terkel, Guiliano Montaldo.
Readers: Tony Shalhoub, John Turturro.
(English, Italian dialogue)
 

Peter Miller's labor-of-love docu on arguably the most notorious miscarriage of justice of the 20th century, the convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti, does a superb job of condensing an overwhelming mass of documentation, archival imagery and artistic representation into a concise yet passionate history lesson whose relevance could not be timelier. In scarcely 81 minutes, Miller sketches the backstories of the two immigrant activists, illuminates the roiling political context of post-WWI America, exposes the injustice of their trial and captures the astounding worldwide reaction to the case. Docu, which opens today at Gotham's Quad Cinema, merits wider theatrical attention.

Miller, longtime producer for Ken Burns and several less mainstream documentarians, and helmer of "The Internationale," spent four years researching Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and it shows in the trenchant clarity of his exposition. He efficiently delineates, in a few broad strokes, how the two men, from different backgrounds in Italy, were radicalized by the prejudice, exploitation and repression that were meted out to immigrant workers in America.

Miller excels at presenting a flow of newsreel-type images that stress the movement of masses of people. Whole "forgotten" swaths of American history rush by with black-and-white immediacy, stressing the dynamism of the period, and placing the bomb-tossing terrorism of Sacco and Vanzetti's fellow anarchists in the context of violent class warfare: Red Squads, operating without warrants or due process, rounded up anyone vaguely suspicious for detention and/or deportation.

Whether either Sacco or Vanzetti was even slightly implicated in the killing of a guard during a botched robbery is apparently still a matter of debate, though Miller presents some compelling evidence of their innocence. That their trial was a travesty of justice, on the other hand, seems indisputable, given that Judge Webster Thayer advised the jury that Vanzetti should be found culpable, even if he did not commit the crime attributed to him, "because he is an enemy of our institutions." Thayer also presided at all subsequent trials and appeals.

Miller captures the sheer scope of the global response and the passion with which people strove to believe in the ultimate triumph of justice through seven long years of futile appeals. Newsreels record the thousands of people who poured into the streets from London to Tokyo to protest the sentence and mourn the executions.

This passion still burns brightly among several talking-head historians who pop up in the docu, from venerable white-haired lefty Howard Zinn to younger crusaders whose emotional empathy extends beyond the men to their families. Woven throughout, and voiced by Tony Shalhoub and John Turturro, are the eloquent, impassioned letters of these oddly complementary idealists whose names are now eternally linked, though the two never knew each other especially well.

Tech credits are excellent. Amy Carey Linton's editing rhythms and choices of black-and-white footage nicely counterpoint Stephen McCarthy's crisp color lensing.

Camera (color/B&W, DV), Stephen McCarthy; editor, Amy Carey Linton; sound, Daniel Brooks, Greg Linton, Brit Warner. Reviewed on DVD, New York, March 17, 2007. Running time: 81 MIN.