Anchored by a ferocious lead performance from Rod Steiger as a scheming land developer, Francesco Rosi's Hands Over the City moves breathlessly from a cataclysmic building collapse to the backroom negotiations of civic leaders vying for power in the City Council election.

Plunging headfirst into the politically driven real-estate speculation that has devastated Naples' civilian landscape, Hands Over the City, which was awarded the Golden Lion at the 1963 Venice Film Festival, remains a blistering work of social realism.