The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971)
In late 1930s Ferrara, Italy, the Finzi-Continis are a leading family: wealthy, aristocratic, and urbane; they are also Jewish. Their adult children, Micol and Alberto, gather a diverse circle of friends for tennis and parties at their villa with its lovely grounds, and try to keep the rest of the world at bay. But tensions between them all grow as anti-Semitism rises in Fascist Italy, and even the Finzi-Continis will have to confront the Holocaust.
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Pretty Good
hyped garbage
if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.
It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
The cast and technical team, led by de Sica created a timeless, moving story of romance set in the context of the mundane and the stupidity of arrogant mobs. The surprise is that a film could accurately convey how this actually happens and do it well. (If only films could change the world.)The frankness with which female sexuality is presented in this film reminds you of Tennessee Williams but the subject of this movie is much more important to us than sexual politics per se. This story deals with institutionalized xenophobia and greed that has characterized western civilization during the last century and which is today the source of human suffering and ecological disaster. De Sica's tale lets us identify with real participants and victims of the fascist Italian pogrom in a way that let's you clearly see that there are people around you who would do this to you and your children if they have the chance.You will enjoy this film for the nostalgia in it's design and the cinematography, settings, costume and locations and for the absence of conceits and cinema effects. Images and montage reveal the story with appropriate music. Because this quality is like a luscious treat, it lures you into a web of understanding of things you didn't expect and when you give yourself up to this experience, you never return, you experience the reward love offers and the cost.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is simply an experience not to be missed for any serious foreign film lover. It has a beautiful innocence to it in this tale of the early days of the Finzi-Continis family before WWII. It shows their personal lives and their dreams for love and success, never guessing their future. Then it shows the tragedy and sadness in time lost and how really horrible and wrong war is.It is beautiful, yet somehow a very haunting film with a wistful score, that seems to be longing for things unattainable. It makes you feel like you're watching an era or time gone by that can never be again. And maybe it's not good to be so naive. Because war comes and life never really recovers from it. But we can remember love...This is a masterpiece to watch and remember.
Maddeningly slow-moving account of an aristocratic Italian family during the onset of World War II who conveniently ignore what is going on in the world beyond their fabled garden of contentment. It's all rather prettily photographed so that a dreamlike spell blurs much of the story and keeps the audience just as isolated from reality as the characters who inhabit THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINI.It's a pretentious sort of film that Vittorio deSica has fashioned to illustrate what happened when Europeans isolated themselves from the ruthless turn of events that unfolded once Hitler and Mussolini came into power. Well acted by a competent cast that includes HELMUT BERGER and DOMINIQUE SANDA, it's hard to work up much interest in characters that are treated with such detachment by the screenplay.It moves predictably toward the crushing humiliation of defeat with passive Italians being marched off to suffer their fate in concentration camps, a downbeat ending to an offbeat film.Summing up: Will appeal mostly to the art house trade.
I liked this film as it approached the holocaust from a completely DIFFERENT direction. Most outside of Italy have no idea about this country's part in the holocaust, but it was quite different from what occurred in Germany. In Italy, Mussolini was supported by Jews and gentiles alike and it was only AFTER the war began that Mussolini began to implement antisemitic laws in order to please Hitler. How he and the people of Italy adopted this was amazing and rather sudden.The movie begins in 1938 and all seems well for the Jewish families portrayed in the movie. Much of the beginning and middle of the movie concerns Giorgio's unrequited infatuation with Micòl Finzi Contini. Although this makes up the bulk of the movie, it is only the background for the more sinister goings on in the country. You see, as the years unfold, more and more restrictions are placed on the Jews and more and more of their rights are eroded. When this first began, the faith of Giorgio's father in their fascist government is unwavering--Mussolini is STILL his hero. However, as the movie continues, his optimism turns to pessimism until he and the Finzi Contini family are rounded up for deportation to the extermination camps by the film's end. Giorgio, it seems has escaped as have other members of his family. However, the exact fate of EVERYONE in the movie (except for Micol's brother) is left uncertain at the conclusion. I liked this, as life, particularly in the case of the holocaust, is far from certain and it seems to work well.