Visconti's masterpiece of austere lyricism was shot in the Sicilian village of Aci Trezza, where fishermen are pushed into poverty by the greed of middle-class wholesalers. The Valastro family, led by the impassioned young N'toni, attempt to overcome this oppression and are ostracized in their ancient community, where the elders are content to complain about their exploitation in knowing proverbs, and the young think they can bargain a future. In a famous climactic scene, N'toni leads the workers in seizing the wholesalers' scales and hurling them into the sea. But the politics of La Terra Trema are in its very making: all the roles are enacted by inhabitants of the village who eloquently portray their lives for the camera and speak in their Sicilian dialect. In powerful poetic contrast to the spontaneity of their humor, their smiles, their rhythms, Visconti's careful arrangement of shots captures a dialectic of their timelessness in time.