La Terra Trema is an austere opera set in the Sicilian fishing village Aci Trezza. The harmony of the people and the sea, the rhythm of festivals and hardships, compose a unique form of docufiction. Charting the arc of one family’s attempt to secure economic self-sufficiency, the film was to be part one of an epic Marxist trilogy, including two unmade episodes on miners and farmers. In realizing a mature aesthetic of landscape, Visconti created a film so impressive as to make him wholly distinct from his already avant-garde contemporaries in Neorealism. – Hugh Mayo, Class of 2018