A cinema-verité style documentary on life in Cortile Cascino, an ancient and shockingly poor slum area of Palermo, Sicily. Made by Robert Young and Michael Roehmer, the team that went on to direct Nothing But a Man in 1964 (Young has since directed Short Eyes, Alambrista! and The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez), Cortile Cascino was commissioned by NBC as one of several “White Papers” directed by Young. But it was never aired or given public screenings of any kind. Had it been, it surely would have ranked as a classic of cinema-verité filmmaking. (In a 1982 article in American Film, Gerald Peary writes that Cortile Cascino remains Young's personal favorite among his films.) The oppressed existence of the slum dwellers is detailed with a compassion that is not demeaning: though the camera is present even in intimate family situations, the effect is not voyeuristic. It is, however, pointed, as Young and Roehmer give the slice-of-life footage discreet structure and clear meaning against an emerging background of Church and Mafia traditions in a town in which, as Peary notes, “only several hundred residents are registered to vote...and the most ‘committed' of the have-nots support the return of the Italian monarchy.” The effectively spare commentary consists mostly of words spoken by the inhabitants of Cortile Cascino to the filmmakers.