Themes: Down on Their Luck, Crimes Against Humanity
Main Cast: Dominique Sanda, Lino Capolicchio, Helmut Berger, Fabio Testi, Romolo Valli
Release Year: 1970
Country: IT/WG
Run Time: 120 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Vittorio De Sica directs the lyrical war drama Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis), based on a book by Giorgio Bassani. In Ferrara, Italy, at the beginning of WWII, anti-Semitism is spreading. Mussolini has passed several laws that forbid Jews from going to public schools, joining the army, or marrying non-Jews. While many middle-class Jewish families flee the country, the Finzi-Continis believe it's safe inside their sprawling estate. As a wealthy, aristocratic Jewish family, they think their luxurious garden walls will protect them from fascism. Micol Finzi Contini (Dominique Sanda) and her brother (Helmut Berger) invite their Jewish friends to join them in the estate for parties, tennis, and games while the war ravages on. Middle-class Jew Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio) attends the parties with his friend Malnate (Fabio Testi). Giorgio and Micol are childhood sweethearts, but she begins to reject him in favor of Malnate. She also refuses to accept that there's a war going on. Eventually they can pretend no longer, and the war closes in on them. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1971. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review
Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini is a work of amazing beauty, a lyrical and poetic film set during one of history's most terrible eras. For all its beauty, the film also uncovers great sadness. The wealthy and privileged Finzi-Continis believe that, it they don't allow themselves to see the ugliness around them, they will somehow be protected from it. While they watch their rights, and the rights of other Jews, be gradually taken away by the Fascists, their own inaction and self-chosen isolation contribute to their downfall. The film was a late-career masterpiece from the great Italian neo-Realist director Vittorio de Sica, whose work had by then fallen from favor. Although the style is more poetic and elegiac than in de Sica's neo-Realist classics of the 1940s and 1950s, it manifests his interest in the lives of the displaced and marginalized -- in this case, a family whose wealth and influence could not shelter them from the horrors of the Holocaust. ~ Richard Gilliam, All Movie Guide
The overall plot of the film follows rather faithfully that of the autobiographical novel on which it was based.
Cast
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis marked the debut or near-debut for some of its stars, notably the two adult Finzi-Contini children, Micol and Alberto. For Dominique Sanda, who plays the lead female role, Micol Finzi-Contini, it was her first Italian feature film (followed by such films as The Conformist and 1900). For Helmut Berger, who plays her dying brother Alberto, it was his second feature film.
