Antonio Arcidiacono	'Ntoni
Giuseppe Arcidiacono	Cola
Giovanni Greco	the grandfather
Nelluccia Giammona	Mara
Agnese Giammona	Lucia
Nicola Castorina	Nicola
Rosario Galvagno	don Salvatore
Lorenzo Valastro	Lorenzo
Rosa Costanzo	Nedda

‘Ntoni (A.Arcidiacono), tired to be exploited by the wholesalers of fish, mortage his house to buy a boat together with his brothers: an awful storm will destroy his dream of economy indipendence and will force him to return to the masters, but he won’t delate his hope. Rereading in progressive key the novel “I Malavoglia” of Giovanni Verga (where he replaces the struggle against the Fate with the one against the exploiters), the second film of Visconti makes explicit the incurable contradition of this director, separated between “refined decadentism and programmatic Marxism”. The decision to use rigorously non professional actors that speak close Sicilan and the documentary eye for the revivals are dignigied from a stylistic and contemplative chioce, by “a cold and distant gestural” that the expressionist use of the dialect accents. The political reading, then, with its need to exemplity - in negative - the political choices of the PCI in which Visconti served (the individual revolt as that of ‘Ntoni is destined to the chessman: to really change the reality a conscience and a collective action of class are needed) accents the romantic tendency of the cinema reduction - the parallel histories of the families Vicari and Valastro, the midadventures of two sisters - but reported with a separation that “doesn’t allow anyone to move and that is almost never able to touch.” The subtitle Episode of the sea lets understand that this had to be the first film of a trilogy that has never been concluded for the commercial failure of the film, in the origine of a new edition too, redub in a more comprehensive dailect and reduced of running time (105’). Francesco Rosi and Franco Zeffirelli are the two assistants to the direction. (P. Mereghetti “Dizionario dei film 1998”, translated by Alice Castoldi)
In The earth trembles of Visconti, his film in which, in appearance, the same authenic Sicilian fishermen would have produced freely the show, every element is organized and built in a precise symphonic score.
The Sicilian dialect, nearly incomprehensible, fills in the images and modulated the dramatic cours organizing now in tuning and now in antithesis with the visual score, where every image, thanks to the photo of G. R. Aldo, not forgetful of Flaherty and Ivens, has the ability to let feel the constant violence of the natural strengths and the exploitation of class on the poor world of the fishermen of Acitrezza. In comparison to the diffused fatalism, Visconti gives to his protagonists and to this world of defeated, particularly to the youth ‘Ntony Valastro, the conscience of the exploitation and the ability to mature the demand to rebel to the unchangeable law of the fate, making them portagonists of their story.
In Visconti’s cinema, and in all Neorealism, The earth trembles has to be considered as the most rigorous attempt to develop up to the extreme consequences some of the common motives to the different poetic. Excluded the immediated oral communication, the film entrusts all his message to the visual component, showing by the director the intention to check and to coordinate the elements directly taken by the reality. The film doesn’t find a suitable possibility of circulation and cash, to the end of its commercial exploitation, only few million. Introduced at the 1948 festival of Venice, it was recommended only by the jury - that since that year starts to feel the conditionings of the new national and international political situation- and is prefered to it, for the maximum international prize, Amleto (Hamlet, 1948), of Laurence Olivier. (From “Il cinema” De Agostini, translated by Alice Castoldi)