With Christ Stopped at Eboli, Francesco Rosi Gave Carlo Levi the Final Word

Defining Italy is harder than one may think. A geographic peninsula? Of course. A country in Southern Europe? Seems undeniable. But what makes a country? People, governments, languages, shared history? If that’s the case, then Italy is more nebulous than it ostensibly seems—and much, much more modern than the myth that it built for itself in the barely 160 years that the state as we understand it today has existed.
Since the Middle Ages, the Italian Peninsula has been a patchwork of city-states and barely mutually intelligible dialects, with some areas ruled by local monarchies and others by a host of foreign empires. Italy (and to the Romans, the rest of the world) was once centered on Rome; the peninsula had become disjointed and diffuse in the wake of its collapse. It wasn’t until 1848, when nationalist revolutions swept across Europe, that the idea of an “Italian” state was really born, and the next two decades were driven by the turmoil of unifying the politically, economically, and culturally diverse peninsula into one nation.
The period known as Risorgimento ended with the newly formed country capturing Rome in 1870, birthing an era of confused hegemony from a social order that couldn’t decide if they were liberals or monarchists, the new Romans or an old oppressed peoples, one social order or many small tribes pretending to play along with the latest game of statecraft by some high-minded elites in far-off palaces. As the years went on, these questions became more contradictory and less legal to ask. The burgeoning state had physically unified Italy, now they needed to do it mentally. The Florentine dialect, immortalized in the writings of Dante, became the lingua franca, and Italian went from innumerable little languages into a single one imposed on everyone. Barely 50 years old, Italy fell into the fervor of fascism, attempting to solidify a mythic identity while at the same time suppressing what was real, fighting a war of nations instead of focusing on its people.
It is this mythic Italy that is upended by Christ Stopped at Eboli, both Carlo Levi’s memoir and Francesco Rosi’s 1979 film adaptation. In 1935, Levi was sent by the fascist government to internal exile, from his home of Turin in the wealthy, industrious north of the country to Matera in the heart of Lucania (modern day Basilicata—the shank of the Italian boot), one of the most remote regions of the south. An anti-fascist, Levi was kept prisoner in different towns until the war in Abyssinia ended in 1936.
A painter and writer by trade, Levi was also trained in medicine, although he never practiced. Reluctantly, he becomes the doctor for the malaria-swept region, an invaluable pillar in the community (as does the dog he picks up, the famous Barone, whom many see as simultaneously a stray and a noble baron in his own right). At least, an invaluable pillar for the peasants. For the local fascist government, this makes him even more of a nuisance, although the mayor, Don Luigi, takes a kind of liking to Levi because of his class standing. It’s through Don Luigi, too, that Levi starts to develop his ideas about problems more intrinsic to Italy than just who rules it: There are always far-off politicians, but it is the local hierarchies that keep people oppressed; petit bourgeois mayors like Don Luigi have been around as long as there have been peasants.
It is interesting that Rosi’s adaptation of Christ Stopped at Eboli, especially the near four-hour TV version, is often cited as being “novelistic” when the book it is based on is anything but. Levi’s memoir is as much a work of anthropology or philosophy as it is a personal story. It is told from his own perspective, but with the wandering thoughts of a man almost 10 years removed from his memories. There are long passages about peasant beliefs in dragons, pilgrimages to and symbolism of madonnas, and the concept of Italy itself. If it is a memoir, it is one more of thought than action. In this sense, Levi’s book is surprisingly unfilmable.
What Rosi does is play Christ Stopped at Eboli straight. Aside from the prologue in an older Levi’s apartment, where he begins to reminisce on his exile in the South, there is no narration. The long dialectic passages of Levi’s novel are turned into genuine scenes of dialogue, some ripped from the book and others invented, with Levi’s argumentative positions turned into on-screen characters. And where the book lives in the slow fluidity of memory, the film takes on the languidity of the present, where Levi (played brilliantly by the outspokenly left-wing Gian Maria Volonté) wanders around ancient towns collecting thoughts from those he passes by.