Allonsanfàn (Allonsanfan). 1974. Italy. Written and directed by Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani. With Marcello Mastroianni, Lea Massari, Mimsy Farmer, Laura Betti. In Italian; English subtitles. DCP. 111 min.
Though Visconti’s The Leopard may be cinema’s most celebrated film about 19th-century revolutionary politics, the Taviani brothers’ stirring account of the Risorgimento, Italy’s fervent drive toward independence and national unification, deserves to be better known, not least because of Marcello Mastroianni’s affecting performance as an aristocratic rebel adrift in post-Napoleonic Italy, a feckless man of treasonous impulses toward his former comrades and lovers. Morricone’s score is at times opera seria and at others opera buffa, perfectly keyed to the Tavianis’ martial scope and touches of magic realism, a fantasia of radical change in the wake of 1968 political disillusionment. Quentin Tarantino would quote Morricone’s main musical theme in Inglourious Basterds.