Rosi made a solid, if unexceptional, solo directing debut with the Neapolitan gangster film, "The Challenge" (1958), but landed squarely in the international spotlight with 1961's "Salvatore Guiliano". The film is an oblique, quasi-documentary account of a real-life Sicilian bandit, told largely in flashbacks and featuring, in true neorealist style, a non-professional cast shot almost entirely on location. It earned critical plaudits, including the Silver Bear at Berlin, and stirred considerable controversy for pointing out--as have several of Rosi's films--the explicit links between Mafia and state. The director continued in a similar vein with "Hands Over the City" (1963), a powerful expose of corrupt real-estate developers, and "The Moment of Truth" (1965), an indictment of exploitation in the world of bull-fighting.

Rosi began to shed the journalistic elements of his style in films such as "Lucky Luciano" (1973) and "Illustrious Corpses" (1976), two visually polished dramas which use the conventions of the gangster and thriller genres to paint searing portraits of institutional and political corruption. (In this respect, his work bears fruitful comparison with that of his countryman, Elio Petri.)

The director's subsequent work has been generally mellower in tone and more leisurely paced. "Christ Stopped at Eboli" (1979) and "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" (1987) were both adapted from literary sources and star Gian Maria Volonte. The first is a lyrical account of writer Carlo Levi's Fascist-imposed exile in a primitive southern village in the 1930s; the second is a beautifully shot but somewhat static adaptation of the best-selling novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "Carmen" (1984) is a relatively faithful, visually sumptuous translation of Bizet's opera to the screen.