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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You don't have to be Jewish ..., 12 May 2008
Good to see this utter masterpiece back, funny yellow subtitles and all. The subtitles, unfortunately, are American and not brilliant (so shall we agree on "Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini" as the title of the film?); I count myself lucky that I understand Italian with ease, luckier yet about a particular accident of birth.
The high point here is the cinematography. The eponymous garden itself, the young people and their cycling outings and garden parties (reminiscent in a way of "Brideshead Revisited"), and the tennis matches (I think irresistibly of J.I.M. Stewart - of Duncan falling in love with Penny on the courts in "Young Pattullo") are all thoroughly English-looking, and, were it not for the glimpses outside the wall, you'd never think this was Ferrara, of all places. It's rather reminiscent of a Merchant/Ivory film, but one with a great deal more class; the finished product didn't always please Bassani, but that was down to De Sica himself necessarily re-writing the script, not to his cameraman.
The personal relationships, superficial as Bassani made them, are even more so here. In essence, the film details the unrequited love of upper-middle-class Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio, on perfect form) for aristocratic Micol Finzi-Contini (the hideously miscast but lovely Dominique Sanda - she's unmistakably French, FRENCH, and sometimes her phonology betrays it). Micol is the character on whom the camera's eye focuses, just as in the novel, and we see her in all her quirks and oddities, as well as in the emergent sexuality she can't control. But - De Sica lets her be blissfully unaware of being Jewish. Bassani didn't. In fact, he made it quite clear that behaviour like her affair with the Gentile Malnate (by the way, folks, a COMMUNIST and not a FASCIST - there's a whole spectrum between them), and parading about in the wet dress that gives us a notion of toplessness, is all thoroughly inappropriate. So is trying to escape her family after Mussolini has passed the Punitive Laws.
The tableaux are the wonderful thing, but not the only thing; in fact, Bassani is best when he preaches most, and De Sica has picked that up. Giorgio's aggressively Jewish father is a wonderful creation; the post-Sabbath singing at table is a splendid scene; and the force of Mussolini's legislation - you can no more do this, you can no more do that - is positively hammered into our heads. (In fact, the permission given by Professor Finzi-Contini for Giorgio to write his thesis in the family library when the university one becomes out of bounds to Jews is wonderfully understated.) Much better is to come.
A few months later, the Gestapo come for the Finzi-Continis just as they've done for Ferrarese Jewish families lower on the ladder. The Professor and his wife go into the cattle lorries with dignity, emotional only when their son - dead of a venereal disease six months before - has his name called and is dealt with by a Nazi with a thick black pencil; the old grandmother is fearful but goes; and only Micol, hitherto too busy having fun, loses her composure. By chance, the Professor and his wife are shoved into one lorry, Micol and her grandmother into the other; this is when the "signora Regina", the old lady, begins to gibber with fear, but she knows no Italian, Micol no Judeo-Spanish, so the only comfort that can be offered is tactile. For De Sica, this is the moment of Micol's awakening; she's not a blonde party girl, not an upper-class young woman having fun, but an Italian Jewess on the way to be gassed at Auschwitz. In this moment she recognizes it, De Sica throws it at us with no subtlety at all - and the film ends far more directly than the book. It's unforgettable.
I've just sketched a few things, and it doesn't really do the film - which is much better than the novel - justice. See it for yourselves.
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