1959 Israel MOVIE POSTER Film WIDE BLUE ROAD GRANDE STRADA AZZURRA Hebrew FRENCH

Description

DESCRIPTION
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Here for sale is an almost 55 years old EXCEPTIONALY RARE and ORIGINAL Photo POSTER for the ISRAEL 1959 PREMIERE of the Italian drama  film "LA GRANDE STRADA AZZURRA" ( With the English name " THE WIDE BLUE ROAD" )  . Starrig among others : The great YEVES MONTAND and ALIDA VALLI to name only a few ( With an early appearance of the future spaghetti Western Icon TERENCE HILL ) , in the small rural town of NATHANYA in ISRAEL.  The cinema-movie hall " CINEMA SHARON" , A local Israeli version of "Cinema Paradiso" was printing manualy its own posters , And thus you can be certain that this surviving copy is ONE OF ITS KIND.  Fully DATED June 1959 . Text in HEBREW and ENGLISH . Please note : This is NOT a re-release poster but a PREMIERE - FIRST RELEASE projection of the film , Two years after its release in 1957 in Europe and worldwide . The ISRAELI distributors of the film have given it an INTERESTING and quite archaic and amusing advertising and promoting accompany text.
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The condition is very good . Folded once.  Clean . GIANT size around 28" x 38" ( Not accurate ) . Printed in red and blue on white  paper .  ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images )  Poster will be sent rolled in a special protective rigid sealed tube.
AUTHENTICITY
: This poster is guaranteed ORIGINAL from 1959 ( Fully dated )  , NOT a reprint or a recently made immitation.  , It holds a life long GUARANTEE for its AUTHENTICITY and ORIGINALITY.
PAYMENTS
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Payment method accepted : Paypal .
SHIPPMENT
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SHIPP worldwide via registered airmail $ 25. Poster will be sent rolled in a special protective rigid sealed tube.
Handling around 5 days after payment.
La grande strada azzurra è un film del 1957, diretto da Gillo Pontecorvo, tratto dal romanzo Squarciò di Franco Solinas. Trama  È la storia di un pescatore sardo che fa uso di bombe per prendere il pesce. Comprando una barca sequestrata, si inimica i compaesani. Nel tentativo di procurarsi dell'esplosivo, aprendo un proiettile residuato bellico, rimane ucciso dall'esplosione. La critica  Su Il Tempo di Roma del 21 dicembre1957: "Il film sviluppa temi sociali che assumono un turgore drammatico attraverso le avventure umane e pittoresche della gente di mare e ancor più nel risalto di ambienti naturali che fanno di per sé atmosfera. Pontecorvo si è valso di tutti gli accorgimenti a sua disposizione affinché il personaggio risultasse un simpatico eroe di avventure marinare e l'assunto accettabile. L'inaccettabile motivo ideologico nuoce a quel che c'è di buono nel film: quadri di vita densi di calore umano, passaggi stupendi e funzionali, recitazione ottima di tutti da Yves Montand a Alida Valli."  ***** A man's relentless drive toward self-destruction is the tenor plot in this film, but the surrounding study of human nature, and of what can be the ultimate values in life fill out the canvas. Squarcio, the hero, has through good fortune escaped detection long enough to establish a comfortable life for his family and loving wife. Other fishermen, who have reason enough to detest him, consistently show him compassion - their basic good natures prevailing. Squarcio, though, like a "Sturm und Drang" character, relentlessly pursues a path his logic - and wife and children - tell him he should abandon. He is offered other choices; he sees other charismatic characters uselessly die - yet his actions are emotionally driven. At mid-film, the local coast guard commander chooses to retire, to quit service before having to witness the death or imprisonment of his childhood friend. I, the viewer, felt likewise - very much like abandoning the theater before the inevitable. Yet I stayed on, hoping for some early hint of a happy end to come. But for me, the most memorable moments in this film were certain sea scenes set to challenge the most beautiful and intriguing of any painting of the old Venetian school - sepia sails, emerald seas, white and green (?) hulls, and old fortresses in the background - all looking a bit unreal, like a child's playthings, almost too perfect, too harmonic. Squarcio, of course, wasn't part of such scenes - he was off on his own, individualist but misguided path.   *****  La grande strada azzurra (English: The Wide Blue Road) is a 1957 Italian romance drama film directed by Gillo Pontecorvo and Maleno Malenotti. Plot The story follows the harsh rugged life of a poor fisherman on a small island off the Dalmatian coast of Italy. In a desperate effort to improve the lives of his family he begins to fish illegally using bombs instead of relying on nets. However this method invokes the hatred of the other fishermen and finally results in tragedy. Cast Yves Montand Alida Valli Francisco Rabal Umberto Spadaro Peter Carsten Federica Ranchi Terence Hill   *****  La Grande Strada Azzura was also released as Squarcio, which happens to be the name of the character played by star Yves Montand. Squarcio is a provincial fisherman who expedites his daily catch through the illegal use of dynamite. The other villagers disapprove of Squarcio's methods, but they refuse to turn him into the authorities. Our hero finds out that he has no real friends when he's on the verge of being caught in the act. Promising to mend his ways, Squarcio goes back to his old tricks as soon as the heat is off. His final comeuppance both predictable and inevitable, but cleverly handled by director Gillo Ponteverco. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi   ******    THE WIDE BLUE ROAD (La Grande Strada Azzurra), is a remarkable debut feature directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, famed for The Battle of Algiers (1966) and BURN! (1969), only now receiving its US theatrical premiere — in a beautiful, newly restored print — thanks to the efforts of Jonathan Demme, Dustin Hoffman and Milestone Film. Set in a fishing village off Italy’s Dalmatian coast, under a brilliant, turquoise sky, Montand plays Squarcio, a rogue fisherman who manages to feed his family by tossing bombs into the water to kill the maximum number of fish. When a new chief of police puts Squarcio’s illegal and dangerous exploits under closer scrutiny, his livelihood is threatened. Montand’s unforgettable, complex character is part working-class hero, part macho-cowboy, part 1950s sex symbol at sea.99 Minutes Italy, 1957  ******     A restored print of Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1957 first feature film, The Wide Blue Road, was finally released commercially in the United States in 2001, forty-four years after the film was made, thanks to the efforts of Jonathan Demme and Dustin Hoffman.  Based on the short story “Squarciò,” by Franco Solinas, who also collaborated on the screenplay, the film chronicles the struggle of an Italian fisherman, Squarciò (Yves Montand), to overcome economic hardships. Squarciò lives with his wife Rosetta (Alida Valli, who recently passed away) and their three children on an island in the Adriatic Sea. Future Spaghetti Western icon Terence Hill, ne Mario Girotti, plays the supporting role of Renato, who falls in love with Squarciò’s daughter. Giuliano Montaldo apprentices as assistant director, the beginning of a collaboration with Pontecorvo that will include two more films, Kapò and The Battle of Algiers.  Although the film does not place the narrative within a specific year, nor does it provide the exact location of the island where the story unfolds, two possible interpretations emerge from the elements provided by the mise-en-scene. A first reading suggests that if Italians live off the coast of Dalmatia (currently Croatia) then The Wide Blue Road would take place sometime between 1920 and 1947.  In1920, following World War I, the Treaty of Rapallo gave Italy several islands off the coast of Dalmatia and the town of Zadar, while the rest of the mainland went to Yugoslavia.     In 1941, during World War II, the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia--Germany occupied most of the territory, while Italy controlled Slovenia, Istria, and Dalmatia in its entirety. One brief linguistic reference situates the present tense of the narrative within a more specific historical context.  Squarciò brings home a radio. One of his sons turns it on and the broadcaster speaks German. It is, then, World War II.  Moreover, the press kit states that the film is set in a fishing village off Italy’s Dalmatian coast. A second reading indicates instead that the story is set in Sicily because the characters mention two terms: the Mediterranean sea (which is not where Dalmatia is located, rather it is in the Adriatic sea) and the Continent (the way Sicilians refer to the mainland). This kind of temporal and geographical vagueness will disappear from Pontecorvo’s subsequent films.     Determined to survive adversity, Squarciò challenges the traditional fishing methods of his fellow fishermen, as well as the law. While they catch fish with nets in scarcely populated waters close to shore, he chooses to detonate underwater dynamite in the open sea to kill dozens of fish in a single explosion. His technique proves successful and he is able to sell fish to the local wholesaler. The Coast Guard have suspected Squarciò all along, but have never been able to catch him. The arrival of a new Coast Guard commander, however, means a relentless pursuit to put an end to Squarciò’s illegal practices.  To stay ahead of the man, Squarciò buys a powerful motorboat.  During the inevitable confrontation between the two, moments before being caught with the dangerous explosives, Squarciò sinks his boat to destroy evidence. Without the boat, he cannot catch and sell fish. This inactivity leads to the inevitable default on his payments on the boat. When the collectors arrive at his house to seize his belongings, Rosetta pleads with them, the only time a woman takes charge in a world dominated by men, and successfully manages to delay payments, while a distraught Squarciò watches helplessly. However, shortly after Squarciò ventures where he has never gone before – he blast-fishes from the shore.     A dispute that degenerates into a fistfight ensues between Squarciò and the village’s fishermen--most prominently between Squarciò and his childhood friend Salvatore (Francisco Rabal). Later, in defiance of the honor code that governs the fishing community, Squarciò bids on a boat that has been seized from a fellow fisherman and auctioned. Not only is Squarciò an outlaw, he also effectively becomes an outsider within his own community. Coincidentally, his name is almost identical to the Italian word “squarcio,” which means, “tear.” Squarciò metaphorically tears his community apart with his unconventional approach to well-established fishing practices. “I am not the co-op type,” replies Squarciò to Salvatore’s attempt to convince him to join his fellow villagers who joined forces and organized a co-operative that will enable them to sell their catch without the wholesaler’s mediation and put an end to his exploitation of their work.     In opposition to Squarciò’s individualistic pursuits, Salvatore embodies the collective voice of the fishermen’s plight. Salvatore’s quest is reminiscent of Luchino Visconti’s The Earth Trembles (1948), an indictment of the abuse suffered by Sicilian fishermen at the hand of wholesalers and the struggle of one family to establish their own business. The similarities to Visconti’s film would have been greater, had producers agreed to Pontecorvo’s aesthetic vision. While the director intended to shoot in black and white, the producers insisted on color to make the film more commercially viable. While the director wanted to employ a cast of fishermen who would play themselves, the producers imposed the star casting of Yves Montand and Alida Valli. However, these two elements give the film its Viscontian touch, albeit a post The Earth Trembles one. The Wide Blue Road references Senso (1954), both in its visual style and with Valli’s presence.     In the final sequence of The Wide Blue Road, a striking visual contrast is established between the gathering of the men as they prepare for their very first trip as a fishing collective out to sea on their sailboats and Squarciò’s lone journey in his little motorboat. This voyage will also become his last: Squarciò literally tears his body apart when the bomb he was setting explodes in his hands. As he lays dying, he delivers his final thought: “What a pity, it was a beautiful day for fishing.”   -   Gloria Monti ******    The Wide Blue Road In a remote and picturesque fishing village on an island off the coast of southern Italy, the local men have lined up to sell their fish to the owner of the only refrigerator in town. With this economic leverage, he forces them not only to accept a lower-than-market price but his insults as well. He refers sneeringly to the small size of their catch as "sardines."  Squarciò (Yves Montand) maneuvers to the front of the line with his catch, which is rich with yellowfin tuna and sea bream that can command high prices on the mainland where the wealthy live. Unlike the other men, Squarciò relies neither on skill nor uses a seine. His secret, which is common knowledge in the village even to the local cop, is that he uses dynamite.  In one of the opening scenes in "The Wide Blue Road," we see Squarciò at work. While sitting on a seaside rock with an artillery shell clenched between his knees, he struggles to unscrew the cap of the shell. Once it is off, he can pour the explosive powder into a homemade bomb. His two young sons stand warily at a distance watching their father at work, sweat pouring from his anxious face. Perhaps Montand's riveting performance in the 1953 "Wages of Fear," his first screen performance, inspired Gillo Pontecorvo to use him in the 1957 "The Wide Blue Road," his debut film. (In "Wages of Fear," Montand plays a down-and-out Frenchman in Mexico who is paid to transport a truckload of nitroglycerine up a bumpy dirt road to the top of a mountain, where it will be used to extinguish an out-of-control oil-well fire.)  Pontecorvo went on to direct two masterpieces of leftwing film, the 1965 "Battle of Algiers" and the 1969 "Quemada" (Burn). As an Italian Communist film-maker, Pontecorvo was not the typical social realist. Starting with "The Wide Blue Road," he always has had his eye on the dialectic of selfishness transforming itself into social consciousness. In both "Battle of Algiers" and "Burn" the transformation is complete as the two protagonists of each film dedicate themselves to the struggle.  In "The Wide Blue Road," the struggle against individualism is much more torturous. For most of the film's narrative Squarciò is the defiant outsider. It is not so much that he seeks wealth; rather he is obeying an imperative to stay above water both literally and figuratively. It is this instinct for survival that makes him play by his own dirty rules. He has bitter memories of being a legal fisherman. When bad weather made it impossible to fish for a number of months, he watched helplessly as his father died from lack of medical attention that he could not afford.  When the cops are about to catch him in the act of throwing a bomb into the water, he sinks the boat, including the new motor that he paid a small fortune for. Later, facing economic ruin, he dives into the water to salvage the motor, nearly drowning in the process.  Squarciò is neither an evil person nor unlikable. All of the other fishermen, while hating his destructive practices, still like him as a person. It is only toward the climax of the film when they have formed a co-op, including a refrigerator, that their goals and his become irreconcilably opposed. His decision to continue bombing not only would cost him their friendship but his own life.  While "The Wide Blue Road" is primarily a film that addressed the key questions facing the left in the 1950s, particularly the need to forge collective bonds of working-class solidarity in a time of burgeoning individualism, it also anticipates questions that would emerge in the 1960s under the rubric "Tragedy of the Commons."  In 1968, Garrett Hardin published a paper by that name in "Science," which was based on the 1833 work of William Foster Lloyd, an amateur mathematician. He tried to understand the dilemma that ranchers faced when they herded cattle on a common pasture. As a rational economic being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. For each additional animal, the herdsman has an economic gain. However, each herdsman reaches the same result - ruin by overgrazing the "free'' good.  The fishermen in "The Wide Blue Road" even try to convince Squarciò of the need to respect the commons in the beginning of the film. He counters with the argument that he only dynamites on the open sea and not near the shore where they fish with nets. Even he understands, no matter how much he rationalizes, that if everybody followed his own example, there would be no fish eventually.  The reality is that we are facing a tragedy of the commons on the sea today, but the instrument of its destruction is not dynamite but "improvements" in the means of production.  According to the Food and Agriculture Administration (FAO), a US agency, the present capacity of the world's fishing fleets is 200% of the world's available fisheries. Over the past 50 years, technological breakthroughs in the fishing industry have far exceeded nature's ability to reproduce itself. The biggest change has been the introduction of sonar, a wartime innovation. Many of the first new fishing trawlers were actually converted WWII submarine hunters.  In the early 1950s, new ships were built from the ground up that could catch 500 tons of fish a day. Huge trawl nets brought the catch on the deck and dumped it into onboard processing and freezing facilities. In the past, ships had to return to port quickly before the fish spoiled. Now equipped with freezers they could spend months at sea, sweeping up vast quantities of fish. They roamed the planet in search of profits. In 1970 the tonnage of all fishing boats was 13,616. In 1992 it was 25,994, a 91% increase. Capital simply flowed to the profitable fishing industry with little regard to the long-term consequences.  One of the consequences of the industrial trawling model is that large-scale production techniques generate huge amounts of waste. The nets draw unwanted species that are simply discarded. The FAO estimates that discarded fish total 27 million tons each year, about 1/3 of the total catch. This includes sea mammals, seabirds and turtles. While Greenpeace activists fight for the life of the unfortunate porpoise, many other species are disappearing without fanfare. The loss is serious since all of these species interact with each other in the marine ecosystem and make natural reproduction possible.  "The Wide Blue Road" deserves the widest audience possible. We are grateful to Jonathan Demme and Dustin Hoffman who have financed its reappearance this year. Now showing at the Film Forum in New York City, it very well might make an appearance in video. Look for it. It is an exceptionally powerful film.     ******   The Wide Blue Road seems to come right out of nowhere. Here's this lovely 1957 Technicolor gem about life in a remote fishing village plopped square in-between the rest of Italian film history and not fitting in anywhere. It comes after the wane of Neo-Realism (Visconti and De Sica) and just before the rise of arthouse gods like Fellini and Antonioni and genre kings like Sergio Leone and Mario Bava. Then there's The Wide Blue Road director Gillo Pontecorvo, who is best known for his later, more political films like The Battle of Algiers (1965) and Burn! (1968). Or maybe this feeling of displacement comes from the very isolation of the movie's village. Or maybe it's just because I viewedThe Wide Blue Road at the Roxie just hours after the September 11 attack on New York City -- the only press screening that day that wasn't cancelled. In any case, it was a good movie to see. The characters (led by stars Yves Montand and Alida Valli) and their problems seemed a long way away from the grim reality in America. Montand stars as Squarciò, a village fisherman who fishes with dynamite (the underwater explosion sends the dead fish floating to the top) even though it's illegal and frowned upon by his colleagues. He hopes to improve his haul by buying a new and faster motor, one that can outrun his constant nemesis, the Coast Guard. His two young sons (Ronaldino Bonacchi and Giancarlo Soblone) accompany him through thick and thin, especially when the Coast Guard traps them in a cove and they're forced to sink their boat in order to avoid jail. Meanwhile, wife and mother Valli (The Third Man) waits and home and worries. Their older daughter (Federica Ranchi) has fallen in love with a rival fisherman, and her situation gets complicated when she loses her virginity to him and he dies in a dynamite accident. Pontecorvo's story (co-authored with his frequent writer Franco Solinas) is really nothing exceptional, but he makes it great by giving it two things -- a sense of routine and a sense of politics. Through the fishing scenes, we get an idea of the life of a fisherman. We watch long shots of Squarciò preparing the dynamite, and doing all the little routine things that fishermen do in order to go fishing. These supposedly "boring" sequences lend an inexorable time and place to the film. In addition, Pontecorvo lends his political passion to the film by making his characters interested in the events around them. A fat fishmonger has a monopoly on the entire town by owning the only freezer and is therefore the only one who buys fish. But the fishermen form a collective and buy their own freezer, freeing them from the power of the fatcat (a political message without being a political message). Pontecorvo handles these matters without grandstanding or speeches. He treats them like everyday events. Had Pontecorvo eliminated this sense of place,The Wide Blue Road simply would have been a Hollywood-wannabe melodrama and not worthy of revival. Strangely, his choice to film it in lush Technicolor takes it away from the Neo-Realism films of the time and does in fact bring it closer to Hollywood, giving it an odd, timeless unreality. It puts the emphasis on artistry rather than gimmickry. It's a strange anomaly, but nevertheless The Wide Blue Road is a truly lovely film. Starring:Yves Montand, Alida Valli, Francisco Rabal, Peter Carsten, Federica Ranchi Written by: Gillo Pontecorvo, Franco Solinas Directed by: Gillo Pontecorvo MPAA Rating: Unrated Language: Italian with English subtitlesRunning Time: 99 minutes Date: January 21, 2002   ******* The Coast Guard is after him, but Squarciò (Yves Montand) is playing it cool. He just threw a stick of dynamite in the ocean so he and his sons could collect the dead fish that come floating to the surface belly-up. Times are tough for Italian fishermen, and Squarciò's only hope is to fish with explosives. The other fishermen don't approve of this unethical practice, and the new chief of the coast guard is determined to bust him.  At first glance, "The Wide Blue Road" looks like another film where kind-hearted and honest Europeans find themselves in severe financial distress and sit around the fire to strum mournful songs on their rusty guitars. They make love in the sand, they boss their wives around, and they cheer and make toasts when the new motor arrives. They name their boats "Hope," but of course the pervasive atmosphere is despair. Visually, "The Wide Blue Road" keeps what the title promises. Scattered islands jut out into the ocean, scraggly trees overlook the barren rocks, but mainly the screen stays a bright Mediterranean blue. Just as rugged as the landscape is Yves Montand's face, furrowed with worry. For all the water and blue skies, he owns the movie with his brazen swagger and patented European cool. What makes "The Wide Blue Road" unique is Yves Montand's undeniable star quality, and the moral twists of his character. His story resembles that warhorse of Italian Neo-Realism, "The Bicycle Thief," but unlike Vittorio De Sica's goody-two-shoes hero Antonio Ricci, Squarciò is morally ambiguous. He brushes aside his fellow fishermen who want him to join their co-op, he ignores his wife's warnings, and he alienates his proud sons. Like a darker European version of Humphrey Bogart, he keeps only his own counsel and does what, apparently, he has to do.  Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, famous for "The Battle of Algiers," in 1957, "The Wide Blue Road" finally sees American distribution thanks to the efforts of Jonathan Demme and Dustin Hoffman, who profess to be "madly in love" with the movie. "The Wide Blue Road" is showing at the Film Forum in New York from June 6 to June 19. THE WIDE BLUE ROAD. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. Presented by Jonathan Demme and Dustin Hoffman. Italy, 1957. 99 Minutes. Milestone Films. Showing at the Film Forum, New York, June 6 - June 19.        ebay1528