---
title: "Christ Stopped at Eboli"
year: 1979
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/christ-stopped-at-eboli"
fi1m_id: "christ-stopped-at-eboli"
imdb_id: "tt0079010"
tmdb_id: 42169
wikidata_id: "Q1087236"
fi1m_score: 85
critics_reviews: 1
published: "2026-09-26T00:41:54.659592+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-26T00:41:59.560689+00:00"
region: "CH"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979)

Directed by Francesco Rosi · 3h 40m · Drama

## Identity

Christ Stopped at Eboli

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/christ-stopped-at-eboli
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** christ-stopped-at-eboli
- **IMDb ID:** tt0079010
- **TMDB ID:** 42169
- **Wikidata ID:** Q1087236
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079010/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/42169, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1087236

**Fi1m score: 85** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* The regime sends a man to the middle of nowhere and he has the nerve to like it there

> Francesco Rosi’s film of Carlo Levi’s memoir of exile is slow, plain and unusually humane, with Gian Maria Volonté at its centre doing almost nothing and holding four hours together. It asks for an evening and a half. Give it.

## Synopsis

Carlo Levi (Gian Maria Volonté), a painter from the north who has opposed the Fascist government, is sentenced to internal exile and delivered by train and car, under guard, to Gagliano, a hill village in the far south of Italy. The podestà, Don Luigi Magalone (Paolo Bonacelli), welcomes him and watches his every step. The village has two ageing doctors, a disgraced priest, Don Traiella (François Simon), a landowning baron (Alain Cuny) and a great many sick peasants, who learn that the newcomer has a medical degree and begin to arrive at his door. Giulia Venere (Irene Papas), who is said to know spells, keeps house for him. He paints, walks the hills with a stray dog and waits, while Mussolini’s voice comes over the village radio.

## Review

Mussolini’s government sent Carlo Levi to a village in the far south of Italy for the crime of opposing it. The memoir he wrote afterwards is less about his punishment than about the place, and Francesco Rosi’s film, written with Tonino Guerra and Raffaele La Capria, keeps to that. It runs 220 minutes and it takes its time because Levi did. It is among the best things Rosi made. It is also a film most people will want to see across two evenings, and it loses nothing that way.

Pasqualino De Santis shoots Gagliano as a strip of pale houses along a ridge, above grey clay gullies that look poured rather than made. The light is thin and even, the sky mostly white, and people are placed small against the land so we understand what it is to live at the end of a road. Andrea Crisanti gives Levi a bare rented room, an easel and the canvases he fills as the months pass, and gives the podestà an office with the Duce on the wall. Enrico Sabbatini puts the women in black from head to foot and the men in cloth worn to the colour of the earth. Piero Piccioni’s music is a few bars now and then; the film runs long stretches on wind, goats and footsteps.

Gian Maria Volonté plays Levi as a man who listens. He arrives with a suitcase, a coat too good for the place and a look of polite attention, and for long stretches the performance is what his face does while other people talk. When the peasants find out he is a doctor and turn up with their fevers he treats them with the little he has and no fuss. It is a large performance made of small movements, and it carries the film.

The village is full of well-drawn people. Paolo Bonacelli’s Don Luigi Magalone, the podestà, is a vain, sentimental little man who cannot decide whether his prisoner is a burden or the most distinguished guest the town has had. François Simon’s Don Traiella is a priest sent here in disgrace and drinking his way through it, and Simon gives him a ruined dignity that is hard to look at. Alain Cuny’s Baron Rotunno owns the land and does nothing with it. Irene Papas plays Giulia Venere, the housekeeper, with a stillness that makes the village talk of witches sound reasonable. Lea Massari’s Luisa, Levi’s sister, arrives from the north and brings the film’s plainest anger with her.

That anger is where the film got to us. On her way in, Luisa is followed by children with swollen bellies and running eyes who ask her not for coins but for quinine. Rosi does not underline it; De Santis keeps the camera at a walking pace and lets the children come to it. We were not ready for it, and hours of film later we were still thinking about it. It is the moment the film tells us what it is about, and Levi is not even in the scene.

The film has faults, and length is not the main one. Levi is never wrong, never petty, never bored, and Rosi admires him as openly as the villagers do; a man exiled to a place with no plumbing surely had worse days than this. The peasants are mostly faces at a door or in a field, seen with great tenderness and rarely allowed to speak for themselves. Ruggero Mastroianni cuts slowly and holds shots a beat past comfort, but somewhere in the third hour we felt the length and grew restless. A scene of the village gathered round a radio for a speech from Rome, the voice rolling on over faces that could not care less, brought us back.

The Fascists here are small officials, not villains, and the subject is what they stand in front of: a south that Rome has taxed and conscripted and otherwise forgotten.

See it over two nights if you must, but do not skip the walking, because the walking is where it lives. Levi arrives expecting nowhere and, over four hours, finds somewhere.

*Fi1m score 85, published 26 September 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is Christ Stopped at Eboli worth watching?**

*Christ Stopped at Eboli* is worth watching for anyone with patience for a slow, plain film about a place rather than a plot, and we scored it 85. Francesco Rosi's version of Carlo Levi's exile runs 220 minutes and asks to be seen across two evenings, which costs it nothing. Gian Maria Volonté holds it together by listening; if you need events, look elsewhere.

**How long is Christ Stopped at Eboli, and what is it rated?**

*Christ Stopped at Eboli* runs 3h 40m. It is a drama film.

**Where can I watch Christ Stopped at Eboli in Switzerland?**

*Christ Stopped at Eboli* is not on any streaming or rental service in Switzerland at the moment. It is available in 2 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

**How does Christ Stopped at Eboli compare to The Tree of Wooden Clogs?**

*Christ Stopped at Eboli* and [*The Tree of Wooden Clogs*](https://film.one/film/the-tree-of-wooden-clogs) are both long, patient films about the Italian rural poor, but Olmi's is the finer and the more direct. Olmi cast real farming families and stays among them; Rosi watches his peasants through an educated outsider, and they are rarely allowed to speak for themselves. Choose Rosi if you want a central figure to follow, Olmi if you can do without one.

**Is Christ Stopped at Eboli based on a true story or a book?**

*Christ Stopped at Eboli* is based on Carlo Levi's book about his own internal exile, when Mussolini's government sent him to a hill village in the far south of Italy for opposing it. Levi wrote less about his punishment than about the place, and Rosi's film keeps to that. You do not need to have read it; the film tells you what it is about in its own time.

**What should I watch after Christ Stopped at Eboli?**

After *Christ Stopped at Eboli*, try [*The Tree of Wooden Clogs*](https://film.one/film/the-tree-of-wooden-clogs) (1978, Fi1m 89): Olmi’s year on a Lombard farm, played by real peasants, patient to the same degree. Then [*The Wind Will Carry Us*](https://film.one/film/the-wind-will-carry-us) (1999, Fi1m 84): Kiarostami sends a city man to a Kurdish village to wait, and to look; and [*The Spirit of the Beehive*](https://film.one/film/the-spirit-of-the-beehive) (1973, Fi1m 87): Franco’s Spain seen from a remote village, through a child rather than an exile.

### Reviews we read (1)

- **Film Comment**, Michael Sragow (70/100, inferred): Sragow presents Rosi’s political epic as a quietly affecting story of an outsider who comes to feel at home. The piece singles out the film’s grounded portrayal of that transformation. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/deep-focus-christ-stopped-at-eboli/)

## Details

- **Director:** Francesco Rosi
- **Director:** Francesco Rosi
- **Screenplay:** Tonino Guerra, Raffaele La Capria, Francesco Rosi
- **Novel:** Carlo Levi
- **Cinematography:** Pasqualino De Santis
- **Editor:** Ruggero Mastroianni
- **Music:** Piero Piccioni
- **Production design:** Andrea Crisanti
- **Costume design:** Enrico Sabbatini
- **Producer:** Franco Cristaldi, Nicola Carraro
- **Cast:** Gian Maria Volonté as Carlo Levi; Paolo Bonacelli as Don Luigi Magalone; Alain Cuny as Barone Nicola Rotunno; Lea Massari as Luisa Levi; Irene Papas as Giulia Venere; François Simon as Don Traiella; Luigi Infantino as Chauffeur; Accursio Di Leo as Joiner
- **Runtime:** 3h 40m
- **First release (Italy):** 22 February 1979
- **Genres:** Drama
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWTxHudGmoM

## Where to watch in Switzerland

Not streaming, renting or buying in Switzerland at the last check.

Also available in: BE, FR. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- BAFTA Film Awards 1983: Best Film Not in the English Language (won)
- David di Donatello for Best Director 1979: David di Donatello for Best Director (won)
- David di Donatello for Best Film 1979: David di Donatello for Best Film (won)

## If you liked this

- *The Tree of Wooden Clogs* (1978), Fi1m 89: Olmi’s year on a Lombard farm, played by real peasants, patient to the same degree. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-tree-of-wooden-clogs.md)
- *Padre Padrone* (1977): The Tavianis on Sardinian rural life, harsher and angrier, with a boy at the centre.
- *Salvatore Giuliano* (1962): Rosi young and furious, taking a Sicilian bandit’s death apart like a court case.
- *The Wind Will Carry Us* (1999), Fi1m 84: Kiarostami sends a city man to a Kurdish village to wait, and to look. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-wind-will-carry-us.md)
- *The Spirit of the Beehive* (1973), Fi1m 87: Franco’s Spain seen from a remote village, through a child rather than an exile. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-spirit-of-the-beehive.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/christ-stopped-at-eboli