In the fascist Italy of 1935, a painter trained as a doctor is exiled to a remote region near Eboli. Over time, he learns to appreciate the beauty and wisdom of the peasants, and to overcome his isolation. The story follows a real life anti-fascist intellectual, Carlo Levi, into his forced exile in small, isolated village in a remote region of Southern Italy. The village is populated by inhabitants who barely survive on the meager harvest of the unyielding land. Eboli, the closest train station, is the last outpost of civilization (such as it is) before entering a world that has changed very little since the Middle Ages. The movie title, after the book written by Carlo Levi, expresses all the sense of abandon, neglect, desolation and human despair. According to the local tales, even Christ, in his southward journey, went no further than Eboli. Beyond that point, not even God dared (or could be bothered) to go... (http://imdb.com/title/tt0079010/plotsummary)




In CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI, director Francesco Rosi’s stunning adaptation of Carlo Levi’s novel, Gian Maria Volonte stars as Levi, one of many intellectuals exiled by the Fascist government during World War II. Banished to Gagliano, an ancient mountain village in southern Italy, Volonte discovers the stark beauty of the landscape as well as the resilience of the peasants, who have lived there for generations. (DVD Product Description)




The legendary Irene Papas costars as the earthy Giulia, a housekeeper who teaches the sophisticated writer about the dignity of people who live close to the land. Francesco Rosi offers an authentic but moving story against a historical backdrop, stunningly photographed in rich detail. (DVD Product Description)




”Christ did stop at Eboli, where the road and the railway leave the coast and turn into the desolate reaches of Lucania. Christ never came this far, nor did time, nor the individual soul, nor hope, nor the relation of cause and effect, nor reason, nor history. No one has come to this land, except as an enemy, a conqueror or a visitor devoid of understanding. The seasons pass today over the toil of the peasants, just as they did 3,000 years before Christ. To this shadowy land, that knows neither sin nor redemption from sin, where evil is not moral but is only the pain residing forever in earthly things Christ did not come. Christ stopped at Eboli.”
DVD Times




Christ Stopped At Eboli exerts a quite remarkable emotional force, pulling us back into another time and place with a quiet, unobtrusive skill. The setting – rural Italy in the 1930s – is completely alien to us yet somehow, through the transcendent skill of director Francesco Rosi, the film makes us feel a nostalgic yearning for something we have never experienced. It’s as impressive a piece of work as the great Italian filmmaker ever produced and considering that he also made Salvatore Giuliano, Three Brothers, The Mattei Affair, Illustrious Corpses and Hands Over The City, that’s high praise indeed. DVD Times




In 1935, the painter Carlo Levi was arrested in Turin for his anti-fascist activities – he was a founding member of the Mussolini-baiting Giustizia e Libertà group – and, as was the practice, sent to a remote area of rural Italy to muse upon his transgressions well away from the company of urban intellectuals. DVD Times




During his period of exile in the Lucania region he observed a way of life which was so remote from his experience as to be completely alien. He did a good deal of painting and opened a small surgery, making use of the skills which he had gained as a medical student at University. DVD Times




The time he spent in exile had a profound effect on his social conscience and confirmed his left-wing leanings – views which led to his imprisonment in 1941 and later saw him run as an independent Communist candidate in the 1963 Senate elections. DVD Times




The prologue, when Levi is old and saddened by age and experience, suggests the inevitable association of memory with loss and it makes the final scene of the film very moving indeed, as we see the village receding from view through the rain-flecked back window of a car as if becoming irretrievably lost amongst the detritus of a life. DVD Times