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    The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

    Reviewed by
    pietroantoni@

    Vittorio De Sica's " Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini " deservedly won the BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OSCAR in 1970. Dominique Sanda, who apparently was quite the big star in the 1970's impressed me enormously as a younger member of the Finzi-Contini. I think it would be fair to say that most people would not believe Italy as having had a Jewish problem during the period of WW II. Well it did. There were no Jewish ghettos in Northern Italy, almost all Jews very well to do, upper crust Italians. And so the spot-light shines on one very important Jewish Italian family... the Finzi-Contini and their horrendous fate like other Jews all over Europe. I knew the Holocaust problem had permeated Italy learning it from a young age from my parents, but in no way could I have understood the severity of it, after all, Germany and Italy made up the AXIS powers during the war. I'm sure the Italian Jews felt quite safe since Italy was fighting alongside Germany and Austria. They were dead wrong.

    De Sica directs with such a fine touch as to pull the viewer totally into the movie. But then, everything about the film was perfection: from its script, photography, the acting, the incredible production design, a total re-creation of Italy from 1940 to 1945 not to mention the glorious set designs of the Jewish estates of great lavishness. It was all on a very grand scale.

    One can't put words to the insanity that was the Holocaust. As I viewed my " film" ancestral Italians robbed of all their earthly goods and debased to animal state, it brought back the moaning of all those millions who suffered a similar state. THIS FACT OF HISTORY is known by very few. IL GIARDINO, the novel, brought more attention to this atrocity in Italy, but few, as stated above, have much awareness of the fate of Italian Jews.

    I RECOMEND THIS FILM SO VERY MUCH, not only because it is a masterpiece, but it will enlighten you to an almost missing historical event, raising the entire film experience to something sublime despite its tragedy of astronomical proportion.

    10
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    pietroantoni@  24.3.2015 age: 36-49 14,540 reviews

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