A raw and sobering story of political corruption in post-World War II Naples. An inquiry into a building collapse lays bare the backroom negotiations of civic leaders vying for power. Winner of the 1963 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion Award.
A building collapses in one of the poorer neighbourhoods of Naples claiming many innocent victims. The residents demand the authorities find culprits responsible for the collapse. Communist councilman De Vita initiates an inquiry that exposes politically driven real-estate speculation and clear culpability on the part of a land developer and city councilman, Edoardo Nottola, who used political power to make personal profit in a large-scale real-estate deal. No one accepts the responsibility for the tragic accident, and legal loopholes allow the culprits to be absolved of all blame and these practices to go unpunished.
"I wanted to submit to the public what would concern them not only as spectators but also as citizens. I didn't want to film a private story, but a public one, in the sense that while having at its centre a man with his passions, as is always the case in a film, it was about a man whose actions, for good or evil, could be judged by each of us as we were directly and personally socially and morally involved in that good or evil." (Francesco Rosi)