La sfida

Vito Polara is a young and ambitious boy from Naples, who makes a living by smuggling cigarettes. He soon realizes that if he wants to make his fortune, he will have to find a way to get into the criminal organization that controls the farmers market. He will get in, thanks to a loan and to the initial tolerance of Salvatore Ajello, the powerful boss of the clan.
Vito thinks he now has the world at his feet: he has a girlfriend and he buys a luxury apartment. But he is full of debts and he has to disobey Ajello’s orders. He requires the freezing of the supplies of tomatoes for one week, while Vito promises a certain amount to a wholesaler. When the farmers refuse to load the product, because they are too scared of Ajello’s men, Vito leaves the wedding ceremony to load it himself and takes the wagons to the wholesale market. There, he is going to find Ajello, who’s going to shoot him with his gun.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

In La Sfida, the major quality was a certain sketchiness of the characters, which was criticized. I cared about that sketchiness very much, because it was required by the characters that were schematic and basic. A scoundrel can never be deeply examined, if one doesn’t take him as the main topic of a story or of a film. (…)
The character played by Suarez was a guy who tried to break a certain circle for his own personal interest, but he was like the others. He was not a man fighting against injustice. He was a scoundrel just like the other ones, he actually wanted to act like that, but on his own. Not everyone got that. I wanted to portray a negative man, as negative as the others. (…)
I found quite fair the critic that said I was cynic and cold in telling the story of La Sfida. But I did it on purpose. What they defined cynical and cold was the objectivity of looking at things from the inside. That’s what Moravia called naturalism, meaning the representation of the facts without an obvious stance of the author. In my opinion, there is a stance anyway, since when someone chooses a certain topic, he chooses his character’s behaviour and makes them act. There is no blame of a character towards the others and, as I was saying, in La Sfida, how can anyone sentence the boss more than Suarez, who just wants to take his place? One can have an emotional preference for a certain character: I can love one character more than another one for sentimental or aesthetic reasons. But in order to tell the facts from the inside of that kind of group, one must have that objectivity that allows him to depict them without getting involved in their lives. I never got involved in their lives. (…)

About La Sfida, we heard about gangster movies influences, Dassin, Kazan and post-war American social cinema quite a lot.
You can surely find these influences, but absorbed, widespread, because I have always been interested in this kind of cinema, not because I wanted to refer to it. I love firmly put together films, which can express themselves in a current way and can submit a particular problem that has a connection with some traditional and universal values, with those kinds of usual story and narration. That’s how a certain type of American cinema expresses itself. It is possible that my admiration for this genre went into my first film experience, as well as into my other works. (…)
I have always been interested in the problems of the relationship between man and society. Before analysing the society, I preferred to try to analyse a “world” that I knew very well. So I chose Naples.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Director and plot: Francesco Rosi.
Screenplay: Francesco Rosi, Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Enzo Provenzale.
Aiuto-registi: Giulio Questi, Nando Cicero.
Assistente: Roberto Pariante.
Director of photography: Gianni Di Venanzo.
Operatore alla macchina: Enrico Menczer.
Art director: Franco Mancini.
Costume designer: Marila Carteny.
Editor: Mario Serandrei.
Music: Roman Vlad.
Fonico: Ovidio Del Grande.
Cast and characters: José Suarez (Vito Polara), Rosanna Schiaffino (Assunta), Nino Vingelli (Gennaro), Decimo Cristiani (Salvatore Ajello), Pasquale Cennamo (Ferdinando Ajello), Jose Jaspe (Raffaele), Tina Castigliano (la madre di Vito), Elsa Valentine, Ascoli (la madre di Assunta), Ubaldo Granata (Califano), Ezio Vergari (Antonio), Concetta Petito (zia Rosa), Rosita Pisano (la lavandaia), Elsa Fiore (la sorella di Vito).
Production company: Franco Cristaldi per la Lux - Vides Cinecitt` (Roma) - Suevia Film (Madrid).
Negativo: Istituto Luce.
Italian distribution: Lux Film.