A left-wing filmmaker (SALO's Pier Paolo Pasolini) and a right-wing extremist humorist (Giovannino Guareschi, author of the "Don Camillo" novels) attempt to answer the question: "Why is our life dominated by discontent, by anguish, by fear of war, by war?" Making use entirely of non-original footage from newsreels and short films, the filmmakers both express concerns for encroaching modernity, but from different viewpoints and on different subjects. Pasolini's concern is with those disenfranchised by the "historical irresponsibility" of the bourgeois world while Guareschi pines for Nazis (he refers to the Nuremberg trials as "revenge"), fascists, and the former colonial empires and decries cinema ("Cinema has made Rome, the capital of Christianity, the capital of sex") and "the third sex". That might seem like a lopsided description, but Guareschi some of Guareschi's rhetoric is unambiguously racist. The narration of Pasolini's section is voiced by painter Renato Guttuso (whose paintings are on view in the film) and author Giorgio Bassani (author of the source novel for GARDEN OF THE FINZI CONTINI) while that of Guareschi's part is voiced by Gigi Artuso and actor Carlo Romano (who dubbed one of the characters in the Italian series of "Don Camillo" films). LA RABBIA is less interesting as a film than for the story of its conception, reception, its withdrawal from circulation and disappearance, and its and rediscovery/restoration. Pasolini began the film as an individual work and turned in a 100 minute cut (edited by Mario Serandrei, BLACK SUNDAY), but the producer cut this version - for which the narration had not been recorded - in half and decided to bring in Giovannino Guareschi to shoot a segment as a conservative answer to the same thesis question. Although publicity materials hyped the film as an argument between the two men, Pasolini was in the re-editing phase (with Nino Baragli, THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY) while Guareschi was assembling his version. Additionally, neither man had seen the other's segment, so there was response or rebuttal (Guareschi's son also disputes the notion that the two men violently disliked each other; although they were opposed to each other's view, Pasolini and Guareschi were civil to one another in their rare meetings). The improbable myth that has surrounded the disappearance of the film was that the left-wing forced Pasoini to bury the film because they thought that the film's structure - although it was two separate films, the placement of Guareschi's segment after Pasolini's meant that viewers were liable to forget what came before and take Guareschi's as the definitive answer - "trapped" Pasolini. Contemporary Italian film scholars posit the notion that distributor Warner Bros. might have been responsible for the film's disappearance due to the extreme America-bashing in Guareschi's segment rather than Pasolini's proletariat sentiments. Black and white 16mm prints of both episodes had been screened separately over the years and were not shown together until the 1988 Venice Film Festival (a black and white VHS of both episodes was issued in 1989 in Italy by Panarecord). The Pasolini episode was included in a DVD edition by MK2 in France with the Guareschi episode placed in the supplements. The color negatives were not discovered until 2005 by Raro's parent company Minerva Pictures (who issued it on DVD in 2008).