The Wide Blue Road

Squarcio is a fisherman living with his family on a small island off the Dalmatian coast of Italy. Like his fellow villagers he struggles with harsh conditions of living, with the scarcity of fish in the nearby waters and with the exploitation of the local wholesaler. But while the others go on using nets, he takes to the open sea and fishes illegally with bombs. He falls into debt, loses his boat, and when desperation forces him to set a charge just off the shore he earns the hatred of the other fishermen. To save his family he puts out again in a new boat, and the sea exacts a heavy toll. The film tells poverty not as an individual mistake but as a lack of any choice. Yves Montand and Alida Valli appear in Gillo Pontecorvo’s hundred and three minute Italian film, completed in 1957.