Christ Stopped at Eboli is a 1979 miniseries from Italy, directed by Francesco Rosi.
It is an adaptation of a memoir of the same title by Carlo Levi. The setting is Fascist Italy, 1935. Levi, a painter of left-wing political persuasion from Turin, is sent into internal exile in the village of Gagliano, a tiny hamlet on the instep of the Italian boot. He is confined to the town and closely monitored by the mayor and the carabiniere (policeman). Levi the intellectual is at first very much out of place in the village, a backwards, desperately poor place where malaria runs rampant and the young men leave if they want to find any work. The villagers find out that Levi is a medical doctor, and despite his protestations that he got a medical degree but has never practiced, is pressed into service as a physician. Eventually, Levi forms a bond with the villagers, and gains a better understanding of a far different place that the big city of Turin.
This work originated as a four-part miniseries for Italian television, running 220 minutes. It was later recut into a 150-minute feature film and exhibited internationally.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – History: There was not a total solar eclipse in Italy in 1935 or 1936.
- Balcony Speech: The mayor has a bunch of villagers forcibly ushered into the square, so he can make a bombastic speech, in classic fascist style, about Mussolini's war in Ethiopia.
- Based on a True Story: Carlo Levi's year in internal exile. The village, which was actually named Aliano, was renamed "Gagliano" in Levi's book.
- Book Ends: Begins and ends with Levi, in his studio many years later, contemplating the portraits he painted of the villagers of Gagliano.
- Cock-a-Doodle Dawn: A rooster crowing as Levi strolls around the town his first morning demonstrates how rural the village is. Soon after Levi sees the rooster, staring at him out a window.
- Fish out of Water: Levi, the highly educated intellectual from a big city, is very much out of his element amongst all the poorly educated, superstitious villagers in Gagliano. In episode 3 he asks his cleaning lady Giulia why she keeps the garbage in the house at night. She tells him without batting an eye that three angels come to protect the house at night, that throwing garbage or dirty water out would insult them, so she has to wait until the next morning when the three angels leave.
- Flyover Country: Or the Italian version thereof. The Central Theme is the cultural divide between mostly urban and cosmopolitan northern Italy, and much poorer, rural, backwards southern Italy. The villagers tell Levi that they regard "Rome" as an occupying power. Levi tells Luigi the fascist mayor that to the townspeople, the government is only something that taxes the villagers and drags their sons off to war. Towards the end, when Levi is back in Turin with his left-wing intellectual buddies, the others talk a big game about a revolution but they also talk about the "servile" attitude and perpetual victimhood of the southerners, and Levi realizes that no one in Italy on the left or the right is really interested about helping the south.
- Gray Rain of Depression: Levi's melancholy mood as he rides the bus to Gagliano is made even more melancholy by the rain pattering the window of the bus.
- Inner Monologue: Levi's internal monologue is heard in the opening scene, as an older Levi thinks back to his time in Gagliano, and later when Levi, in Gagliano in 1935, thinks about how the village is ignored by virtually everyone.
- Intro Dump: Soon after arriving in the town, Levi meets Luigi the mayor, who introduces himself. Then Luigi introduces several other characters, like Don Traiella the priest, Dr. Milillo, and the local carabiniere.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Don Traiella the priest waits for his Christmas sermon to say that the war in Ethiopia is an imperialistic land grab. Then he lays into his parishioners, saying they're all lazy good-for-nothings who drink and curse and don't come to communion or confession and don't baptize their children.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Town gossip has it that Don Traiella, the priest, was transferred from a post at a seminary to the backwater of Gagliano because he was fooling around with the young men in the seminary.
- Re-Cut: There's the original 220-minute television cut, and the more widely available 150-minute theatrical cut.
- Slice of Life: There's little plot in the series/film, just a portrait of an antifascist and his year living in exile in a small Italian village.
- Title Drop: Eboli is the nearest train station, which is still an hour away by bus and car. Levi, taking stock of the town of Gagliano, thinks "Christ stopped at Eboli," because the town is so isolated and forgotten that Jesus himself has never been there.
- Total Eclipse of the Plot: A solar eclipse passes over the village. The ignorant villagers wonder if it's an open. Don Trajella the priest thinks it's God signaling punishment for their sins, to which the more practical-minded Levi says it's punishment for Italy using poison gas on the Ethiopians.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The opening scene has Levi, decades after leaving Gagliano, thinking back to his time there. Then the series jumps back to 1935 and Levi's arrival in Gagliano.
