| Director | Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani |
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All the stories take place in Sicily in the second half of the nineteenth century or the early twentieth century. The different episodes are connected by a crow, which peasants capture in the very short opening scene, tie a bell around its neck, and release. The crow flies above their heads, ringing like a herald—sometimes of misfortune, sometimes of good fortune—accompanied by a recurring musical motif (leitmotif). The crow also symbolizes the social outcast, since in the opening scene it is caught while incubating eggs despite being male; the peasants therefore initially torment it and only later release it with the bell around its neck. Social outcasts (or marginal, excluded figures) stand at the center of the first three stories of the film. At the end of the first story, the outcast painfully reconciles himself with his condition; at the end of the second, he is granted renewal and consolation; at the end of the third, he emerges as a victorious hero. The fourth story does not deal with an outcast, but it closes the circle, since the peasants from the opening scene reappear in it.
The film is essentially realistic, yet in almost every episode there is a short, delicate, and surprising surrealistic moment. Moreover, in most of the episodes there are subtle allusions to other parts of the film—hints that become noticeable mainly upon a second or third viewing. Part of the film’s delicate surrealism is expressed in scenes where the directors introduce a strange, restrained silence into an otherwise dynamic plot, sometimes precisely in situations where people would normally be noisy. Such scenes appear in all the stories: for example, in the cruel game of Rocco Trupia’s gang (in the first story), in the dance around the jar (in the third story), and in the dispersal of the demonstration (in the fourth story).