TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Cortechba Overrated

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

gavin6942 In the late 1930s, in Ferrara, Italy, the Finzi-Contini are one of the leading families, wealthy, aristocratic, urbane; they are also Jewish. Their adult children, Micol and Alberto, gather a circle of friends for constant rounds of tennis and parties at their villa with its lovely grounds, keeping the rest of the world at bay. Into the circle steps Giorgio, a Jew from the middle class who falls in love with Micol."The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. It won the Golden Bear at the 21st Berlin International Film Festival in 1971. It is considered de Sica's penultimate film, though this depends on how you count.The film itself is very beautiful, and the quality would make me think 1980s more than 1970. Italian cinema tends to be behind American cinema in technology, and I am quite impressed with what they were able to achieve here. It really is something of a masterpiece in the look. The characters are well fleshed-out, and I am not surprised that some of the actors went on to bigger things (e.g. Helmut Berger).One thing that strikes me as interesting today (2017) is how films around the Holocaust have been consistently successful in awards season. This was almost 50 years ago, and today we still get the Holocaust film again and again. That is not a criticism of the filmmakers. There is no story more powerful in the last 100 years. It just strikes me as interesting how film has chosen that as the nexus, the focal point. You might think American films would try to pivot to 9/11 (admittedly a far, far smaller event), but this has not really happened.

Jackson Booth-Millard I think I only just remembered that I read about this Italian film in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, because it is an unusual title, but with the high critics rating it was one I definitely looked forward to trying, from director Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D.). Basically set in the late 1930's, in Ferrara, Italy, a group of young friends are banned from playing tennis at regular clubs, so they do so in grand, walled estate owned by the Finzi- Contini, a wealthy, intellectual and sophisticated Jewish family, the two young Finzi-Contini are brother Alberto (Helmut Berger) and sister Micol (Dominique Sanda). We see a series of flashbacks of Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio), middle class Jewish childhood friend to Micol, and how he used to be looking for him having feelings for her, and the two of them got somewhat closer from being friends to him having special attention from her, he tries at one point to make an advance, but she rejects him. Alberto meanwhile has fragile health, and has a close friendship with darkly handsome Bruno Malnate (Fabio Testi), and Giorgio's Father (Romolo Valli) feels the Finzi-Contini don't seem all that Jewish at all, but the family is perhaps overwhelmed by wealth, privilege and generations to be as proud as vulnerable to the realities of what is going on around them. Giorgio, who is definitely in love with Micol is a frequent visitor in the library at the Finzi-Contini's villa, and Micol does seem to show return feeling, but following a visit to Venice and her uncles she rejects all his affection, and continues an affair with Bruno, Giorgio seems them naked together through a window and is heartbroken, so he gets comfort from his father. By 1943 the Germans have invaded the Soviet Union, and all the young Jewish people who hung around the family estate have been arrested, Alberto dies from his sickness, the Finzi-Continis are finally seized by the Nazi army and taken into isolation, packed into a former classroom and separated from each other, the fate for all the many Jewish people of Ferrara in this space is that they will all be sent to concentration camps, the film ends with the final happy images of Micol, Alberto, Giorgio's brother Ernesto (Raffaele Curi) and Bruno playing tennis, with death music playing in the background. Also starring Camillo Angelini-Rota as Micol's Father - Prof. Ermanno Finzi-Contini, Katina Morisani as Micol's Mother and Inna Alexeievna as Micol's Grandmother. I will be honest and say that most of the pleasant material before the last twenty to thirty minutes were fine, the family and friends bonding is good, but for me the most memorable scenes are the horrific sights of the Jewish people you know are doomed to the fate of the holocaust, but throughout there is great music, good colourful and later faded imagery and all in all a good feeling humanity tested, it is an interesting Second World War drama. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it was nominated for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, and it won the BAFTA for the UN Award, and it was nominated for Best Cinematography. Very good!

michael-2490 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.

tsf-1962 In its own quiet way this Vittorio de Sica gem is as gripping and powerful as such more graphic Holocaust films as "Schindler's List" and "Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom." It deals with a wealthy Italian Jewish family living in a secluded estate in the city of Ferrara. The Finzi-Continis are almost completely assimilated and have little in common with their fellow Jews, but once Mussolini's racial laws begin to take effect they open their gardens to young Jews from the neighborhood. The movie depicts the fatal passivity of people who think they're safe, that monstrous social upheavals won't touch them. Slowly but surely the Jews of Italy have their freedom taken away from them; before they know what's happening they're headed for Auschwitz. The movie leaves the fate of the Finzi-Continis unresolved, but we know from the novel by Giorgio Bassani that none of them survived. This film is beautifully photographed with the visual opulence one has come to expect from Italian cinema, with a haunting score and memorable performances, especially by the ravishing Dominique Sanda, quite possibly the most beautiful woman to ever appear on film. This is a movie everyone should see, since it drives home only too clearly the lesson that freedom can never be taken for granted, that what happened in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy could happen here too. No one is safe.