Here is the S&V notice from today's times that DR Ben referenced earlier:
March 29, 2007
MOVIE REVIEW | 'SACCO AND VANZETTI'
From Immigration to Anarchy
By MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
This feature filmmaking debut by Peter Miller (a PBS veteran and longtime collaborator of Ken Burns) hews to standard television documentary format: archival photographs and talking heads. But the movie's meat-and-potatoes style seems less a failure of imagination than a means of putting in the foreground its subject matter: the tale of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrants and outspoken anarchists charged with the 1920 robbery of a Massachusetts shoe factory and the murder of two of its employees.
The film's first half details Sacco and Vanzetti's personalities, upbringing and political beliefs; the beliefs are articulated via letters read by the actors John Turturro (Vanzetti) and Tony Shalhoub (Sacco). The second half follows the duo's two trials, six years of protests and appeals and 1927 execution.
Throughout, Mr. Miller incorporates relevant film clips (including Giuliano Montaldo's 1971 drama "Sacco e Vanzetti") and songs (notably Woody Guthrie's protest song "Red Wine," performed on camera by Arlo Guthrie). Testimony by historians — a couple of whom are moved to tears, contemplating the story — compares Sacco and Vanzetti's demonization by a society terrified of anarchism and immigrants to the mistreatment of Middle Easterners after 9/11.
Less didactic and more piercing is the sense that two human beings were killed despite inconclusive or conflicting evidence, as an example to fellow travelers. The judge in the case, Webster Thayer, told the jury, referring to Vanzetti, "This man, although he may not have actually committed the crime attributed to him, is nevertheless culpable, because he is the enemy of our existing institutions."
SACCO AND VANZETTI
Opens today in Manhattan.
Directed by Peter Miller; director of photography, Stephen McCarthy; edited by Amy Carey Linton; music by John T. LaBarbera; produced by Mr. Miller and Ms. Linton; voices of Tony Shalhoub (Sacco) and John Turturro (Vanzetti); released by First Run Features. At the Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 81 minutes. This film is not rated.
