I had read about this movie because it comes up on an occassional "All Time Greatest Movie" lists. As such, I was aware of the fact that the movie was made with a complete cast of amateurs taken from a Sicilian fishing village which was also the location of the movie. The opening credits substantiate that by not naming the actors but, rather, citing them as the people of the village. They do a very good, sometimes excellent, job. There might not be an Academy Award-level preformance in the bunch but they out-shine the cast of most "B" movies I've seen. In fact, only the person who plays Mara's boy friend, the mason, give anything like a one-dimensional preformance and it is mostly noticeable by how it stands apart from the others.
