Best known in the States for 1960s comedies like Divorce, Italian Style, Pietro Germi originally worked in the neorealist vein – gradually infusing his style and subject matter with elements of genre. Co-written by Frederico Fellini, The Bandit of Tacca del Lupo is a Western set in Sicily during the turbulent 1860s, when unification meant not autonomy but a new conquest, this time by the forces of northern Italy. In a battle over the control of a small town that draws the terrorist campaign of bandit leader Raffa Raffa and a wily team of sharpshooters, Germi's eye for military action in a dramatic landscape exposes his deep adoration of John Ford, and his clear-eyed, cold-blooded filmmaking takes no sides – both the government forces and the rebels appear more capable of cynical calculation than ostentatious heroics. – DP