Customer Reviews

Sacco and Vanzetti

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I had the good fortune to see this film when it was shown in New York this past Spring. I brought my 14 year old daughter with me, albeit with some misgivings as I was concerned that she would be bored with a "history lesson"... my fears were unfounded. My daughter was mezmerized by this film, and spent the last 20 minutes literally on the edge of her seat. Afterwards she asked, "Why don't they show things like this in school?"

Whatever your political leanings or views on illegal immigration may be this movie is a fascinating study of what happened to these two men. I suggest that you take the time to view and make up your own mind as to whether these men were guilty, or merely convenient scapegoats.

Although a drama lover, I do enjoy a good documentary--and this is a good one. Most of us, I suspect, have heard the names Sacco and Vanzetti, but I bet that most don't recall the details of the case. This film is a concise, 82-minute documentary that covers the background of the two men, the crime that took place, the evidence (or lack thereof) which convicted them, and the public outcry over the trial and execution. It's nicely done, using both still photos and some clips from an earlier (and currently unavailable) film, as well as interviews with people close to the case. It's well-paced; it tells the story, but doesn't drag. Many of the stills are quite lovely and I really enjoyed the soundtrack. A fine example of documentary filmmaking--and a history lesson with relevance today.

Ever since high school I have been immediately intrigued and drawn to the story of Sacco and Vanzetti. Edna St. Vincent Millay's pungent poem, "Justice Denied in Massachusetts" was a part of our American Literature textbook, and ever since we read that poem, I have yearned to learn more. Coming across bits and pieces over the years, my curiosity wasn't satisfied until this recent documentary. There are a lot of candidates for "Trial of the Century". The Lindburgh Trial was chief contender for a long while until O.J., but big things come in threes. "Sacco and Vanzetti" has to be up there. Using a plethora of interviewees and actual film of the defendants, including swelling crowds of protestors, Director Peter Miller and Editor Amy Carey Linton draw upon a wealth of material and angles of the trial.

Many historians are present and much of the trials' testimonies have been documented. Throw in some modern ballistics experts, letters by the defendants, and interviews with living relatives of key people, and you have a rich and condensed viewing experience. They even have artists testify to the powerful inspiration of Sacco and Vanzetti with repercussions in painting, literature, film, and movies. Some of the film has clips from Guiliano Montaldo's 1971 movie of the men as well as other performances, including a passionate invocation by Henry Fonda.

A smooth and detailed sense of history pervades the documentary. When narrating their upbringing in Italy, they bring footage of their childhood neighborhoods. Even Nicola Sacco's niece is interviewed in Italy with subtitles translated into English. Historians like David Kaiser do a skillful job of piecing together the steps that led to their arrest and subsequent executions. Giving background of the "red scare" of the 1920's (and I only thought that was in the '50's), the mistrust of foreigners, the smearing and deportation of many Italians, they shed light on Sacco and Vanzetti's vulnerability. Mainly, guilt by association was used by two men who believed in anarchy and socialism (mostly the latter for the horrible conditions for their fellow Italians).

If I had a criticism of the movie, it's how they stack the deck. They don't have too many guests who debate in favor of the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti, but maybe there weren't any takers. Of course that may be poetic justice for the lack of justice at their trial. After watching the documentary, I believe what I suspected in my bones for years: That they were innocent. However, the historians are good at conceding there are holes in places in favor of their innocence. One of the merits of the film is how they sort out the evidence. But, what they do prove beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the trial was unfair. It is the principle of the justice system to implement the credo: "Innocent until proven guilty." And this clearly wasn't served. To give just one example in the film, they document how during the implicated bank robbery and murder on December 24, 1919, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a street fish vendor, was selling eels to his Italian neighbors to fulfill an Italian Christmas Eve tradition.

Presenting conflicting evidence and the documented biases of the presiding judge, 'Sacco and Vanzetti' is a fascinating and absorbing ride through a landmark piece of the past. With clarity and a keen vision, the film makes a great case for our benefit. Even drawing some analogies of today, the movie does an admirable job of becoming a cautionary tale without overdoing it. Clocking in at 1:23, the documentary is never tedious nor does it take extraneous detours. There's so much more evidence to take in, but this treasure is meant to be unearthed for yourself.

(Also featuring Studs Terkel and Arlo Guthrie.)

Although already familiar with the story of Sacco and Vanzetti, I was thoroughly shocked and enraged (and ultimately charmed) by this thoughtful film. It is a very straightforward historical documentary (nothing flashy here), but the music and poetry and artwork woven into it really brings the story to life. I would have liked to have seen more attention given to the story's relevance today (immigrants' rights again being a hot topic in this country), but nevertheless this is a solid and well-crafted treatment of one of the most notorious criminal trials in American history.

I have used some of the points mentioned here in previous reviews of books about the Sacco and Vanzetti case.

Those familiar with the radical movement know that at least once in every generation a political criminal case comes up that defines that era. One thinks of the Haymarket Martyrs in the 19th century, the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930's, the Rosenburgs in the post-World War II Cold War period and today Mumia Abu-Jamal. In America after World War I when the Attorney General Palmer-driven `red scare' brought the federal government's vendetta against foreigners, immigrants and militant labor fighters to a white heat that generation's case was probably the most famous of them all, Sacco and Vanzetti. The exposure of the tensions within American society that came to the surface as a result of that case is the subject of the film under review.

Using documentary footage, reenactment and `talking head' commentary by interested historians, including the well-known author of popular America histories Howard Zinn, the director Peter Miller and his associates bring this case alive for a new generation to examine. In the year 2007 one of the important lessons for leftists to be taken from the case is the question of the most effective way to defend such working class cases. I will address that question further below but here I wish to point out that the one major shortcoming of this film is a lack of discussion on that issue. I might add that this is no mere academic issue as the controversy over the strategic call for retrial or freedom in the current case of the death-row prisoner, militant journalist Mumia-Abu-Jamal, graphically illustrates. Notwithstanding that objection this documentary is a very satisfactory visual presentation of the case for those not familiar with it.

A case like that of Sacco and Vanzetti, accused, convicted and then executed in 1927 for a robbery and double murder committed in a holdup of a payroll delivery to a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1920, does not easily conform to any specific notion that the average citizen today has of either the state or federal legal system. Nevertheless, one does not need to buy into the director's overall thesis that the two foreign-born Italian anarchists in 1920 were railroaded to know that the case against them 'stunk' to high heaven. And that is the rub. Even a cursory look at the evidence presented (taking the state of jurisprudence at that time into consideration) and the facts surrounding the case would force the most mildly liberal political type to know the "frame" was on.

Everyone agrees, or should agree, that in such political criminal cases as Sacco and Vanzetti every legal avenue including appeals, petitions and seeking grants of clemency should be used in order to secure the goal, the freedom of those imprisoned. This film does an adequate job of detailing the various appeals and other legal wrangling that only intensified as the execution neared. Nevertheless it does not adequately address a question that is implicit in its description of the fight to save the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti. How does one organize and who does one appeal to in a radical working class political defense case?

The film spends some time on the liberal local Boston defense organizations and the 'grandees' and other celebrities who became involved in the case, and who were committed almost exclusively to a legal defense strategy. It does not, however, pay much attention to the other more radical elements of the campaign that fought for the pair's freedom. It gives short shrift to the work of the Communists and their International Red Aid (the American affiliate was named the International Labor Defense and headed by Communist leader James P. Cannon, a man well-known in anarchist circles and a friend of Carlos Tresca a central figure in the defense case) that organized meetings, conferences and yes, political labor strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti, especially in Europe. The tension between those two conceptions of political defense work still confronts us to day as we fight the seemingly never-ending legal battles thrown up since 9/11 for today's Sacco and Vanzetti's- immigrants, foreigners and radicals (some things do not change with time). If you want plenty of information on the Sacco and Vanzetti case and an interesting thesis about it's place in radical history, the legal history of Massachusetts and the social history of the United States this is not a bad place to stop. Hopefully it will draw the viewer to read one or more of the many books on the case. Honor the Memory of Sacco and Vanzetti.

Long before Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafucco became household names and courtroom celebrities, long before Robert Blake and O.J. Simpson took to the stand in their own defense, there were Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants whose highly-publicized murder trial electrified the nation and became one of the hot media sensations of the 1920's.

Shortly after coming to America, both Sacco and Vanzetti became involved with a group of socialist anarchists dedicated to eradicating (sometimes through the use of violence) the stark inequities of status and class they perceived in the society around them (an idea that did not go down well in a capitalist nation watching in horror the success of the then quite recent Bolshevik Revolution). On April 15, 1920, the pair was arrested for the murder of two men, a paymaster and a security guard, who were shot in cold-blood while transporting the payroll from a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts. Even though there was no real evidence tying them to the killings, Sacco and Vanzetti were eventually placed on trial, convicted on charges of 1st degree murder, and put to death in the electric chair on August 23, 1927. In the years since, the case of Sacco and Vanzetti has gone down in history as one of the major miscarriages of justice in all of American jurist prudence, while their very names have become synonymous with a legal system that too often abandons its quality of disinterested objectivity in favor of bigotry, corruption and fear.

As directed by Peter Miller, the documentary, "Sacco and Vanzetti," attempts to come to terms with the fate of the two men and to view the case in its broader social context. Through the use of archival photos and footage, interviews with experts and historians (and even a niece of Sacco himself), clips from the 1971 movie dramatization of the story, "Sacco and Vanzetti," and voiceover recitations of excerpts from the two key figures' very own journals and letters, Miller explores how the legal system was able to veer so far off the rails in a country that prides itself on the blindness of its justice and the fair treatment it ostensibly affords to all its people. He finds his answer mainly in the love/hate relationship that America has always had with its immigrant populations. For he makes it clear that this was little more than a sham show trial, one consisting mainly of circumstantial evidence and fraudulent testimony, presided over by a judge with small tolerance for immigrants or anyone not of the Anglo-Saxon persuasion. The men were found guilty more of the sin of being "unpatriotic" than of the commission of any actual crime. It is this aspect, more than any other, that touched such a raw nerve in so many people not only in the United States but around the world. Towards the end, we are shown how the case eventually moved beyond its own limited context, entering the realm of American mythology and inspiring socially conscious artists, poets, novelists and songwriters to produce some of their most poignant and notable work.

Although the movie is a bit murky on some of the facts of the case and doesn't offer us a clear enough picture of the men as individuals (the pre-crime period in their lives is particularly sketchy), "Sacco and Vanzetti" provides us with an interesting history lesson as well as an intriguing glimpse into the time in which the events took place. In addition, with its tale of racial discrimination and societal prejudice, the movie has a great deal of relevance for the world today as we see immigration once again coming to the forefront as a hot-button political issue, a parallel the filmmakers are quick to point out at the conclusion of the film. That alone makes this a movie well worth checking out.

For years I heard about this case of "unsubstantial evidence" and political harassment through folk songs sung by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. That's all I knew of the story. I decided it was time to learn more when this 2006 documentary came out recently on DVD. It uses a lot of footage from an Italian fictionalized version of the story that was made years ago. (I need to seek out that one as well.). The archival footage used is excellent and this film raises questions in a few areas. Other reviews have discussed the "immigration" and "illegal alien" angle. I saw the film more from a "civil rights" angle. Is a man innocent until proven guilty - beyond reasonable doubt? It seems that most articles and, certainly this film, show that the "beyond a reasonable doubt" did not exist. Much of the evidence was conflicting and not substantiated.

A documentary should not be judged on whether the viewer agrees with the outcome of the events but whether the Director was fair in his/her presentation. On this level I think it succeeds. And it acts as a history lesson. It's not that's it's "very timely" as the package says. It was never "untimely", in my opinion. With the supplemental materials including a FAQ section, this can be a useful tool in both schools and universities and should be available in every public library's DVD collection.


Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"

This is a well-researched documentary with expert editing and direction. It's a piece of history that is extremely relevant to modern times. Thought-provoking, entertaining, and more disturbing than any horror film you are likely to see this year. Don't miss this wonderful film!

This is an insightful documentary that gives audiences a multi-faceted view of a seminal event in American history -- one that still reverberates today. The film deconstructs the entire S&V case by giving us commentary by scholars, neighbors and eye witnesses. A nice touch is the expertly-edited clips from theatrical feature films, which breath new life into the traditional documentary format.

There is a wonderful grace note near the end where a letter, written by Sacco to his son just before his execution, is read as the video shows us beautiful bucolic scenes -- scenes that Sacco describes, but would never see again.

The film leaves us with a cautionary note - we the people must stay alert to attempts by those in power to use external threats as an excuse to clamp down on civil liberties.

Check out this film. You will not be disappointed.

Sacco and Vanzetti is not only a fascinating and extremely well done film,it also tells the story of what was truly the case of the century capturing the attention of people worldwide. It is a history lesson we must all remember,