Using a cast of non-professional actors – the actual fishermen and people who lived in the villages where the movie was shot – director Luchino Visconti takes a very specific story and makes it universal (as well as thoroughly entertaining). The film focuses on one particular family who decide to fight back against the virtual master/slave relationship they have with the fish buyers they work for and the grinding poverty they face every day. They mortgage their house and set up their own fish selling operation and, for a while, life is very good. Then the boat is caught in a storm and nearly wrecked. Without the money to fix it, the family finds itself back where it started, only this time with a crippling mortgage to pay. It’s bleak, to be sure, but somehow Visconti makes it beautiful, too.
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