Sacco e Vanzetti (1971 film)

Sacco e Vanzetti
One of Italian theatrical release posters
Directed by	Giuliano Montaldo
Produced by	Arrigo Colombo Giorgio Papi
Written by	Vicente Aranda Fabrizio Onofri Giuliano Montaldo Mino Roli Ottavio Jemma
Starring	Gian Maria Volontè Riccardo Cucciolla Cyril Cusack Rosanna Fratello Geoffrey Keen Milo O'Shea
Music by	Ennio Morricone
Cinematography	Silvano Ippoliti
Distributed by	Globo Vídeo (Brazil) (video) Sherlock Media S.L. (Spain) (1999) X Films (1971) UMC Pictures (USA)
Release date	1971 (Italian)
Running time	121 min.
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

Sacco e Vanzetti is an Italian docudrama written and directed by Giuliano Montaldo that premiered in Italy on 16 March 1971. The story is based on the events surrounding the trial and judicial execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two anarchists of Italian origin, who were sentenced to death by a United States court in the 1920s. The film's musical score was composed and conducted by Ennio Morricone with the three-part ballad sung by Joan Baez. The film is mainly shot in colour although it both starts and finishes in black and white, and also includes period black and white newsreels.

The film's soundtrack was composed and conducted by Ennio Morricone with song lyrics by the American folk singer Joan Baez. For the lyrics of The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti Part 1, Baez makes use of Emma Lazarus' 1883 sonnet The New Colussus the lines of which appear inscribed on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

The song, Here's to You, is sung at the end of the film. For the lyrics of Here's to You Baez made use of a statement attributed to Vanzetti by Philip D. Strong, a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance who visited him in prison in May 1927, three months before his execution.

If it had not been for these things, I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as we now do by accident. Our words—our lives—our pains—nothing! The taking of our lives—lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler—all! That last moment belongs to us—that agony is our triumph.

Here's to You is also included in several later films notably in the 1978 quasi-documentary film Germany in Autumn where it accompanies footage of the funeral march for Red Army Faction members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe who had committed suicide in prison.