Il giardino dei Finzi Contini

Plot synopsis:
In the late 1930s, in Ferrara, a group of young friends get together for afternoons of tennis and happy times. Some of them are Jewish and a rising tide of Fascism has imposed increasingly anti-Semitic restrictions in their lives. Barred from regular tennis clubs, they go to play at the grand, walled estate owned by the Finzi-Contini, a wealthy, intellectual and sophisticated Jewish family. The two young Finzi-Contini, Alberto and his sister Micòl, have organized a tennis tournament. Oblivious to the threats around them, life still seems to be sunny at the large Finzi-Contini estate, keeping the rest of the world at bay.
Among the visitors there is a man vying for the beautiful, tall and blonde, Micòl Finzi-Contini. Giorgio, her middle class Jewish childhood friend, feels entitled to her heart. A series of flashbacks show how Giorgio used to wait outside the walls of the estate, hoping for a glimpse of Micòl. As teenagers they became fast friends. Now as adults, they enjoy their mutual company and Micòl gives Giorgio special attention. Escaping a sudden downpour in a gazebo, Giorgio tries to touch her, but she rejects him. Alberto, whose health is fragile, enjoys a close friendship with Bruno Malnate, a darkly handsome gentile with socialist sympathies. Giorgio's father considers the Finzi-Contini so different that they don’t even seem to be Jewish. Wealth, privilege and generations of intellectual and social position have bred them into a family as proud as it is vulnerable. The other Jews in the town react to Mussolini's edicts in various ways: Giorgio is enraged; his father is philosophical. But the Finzi-Continis hardly seem to know, or care, what is happening.
Giorgio, who is about to graduate, becomes a frequent visitor to the Finzi-Contini's villa where he is allowed to use their extensive library. He is in love with Micòl, and she seems to return his feeling, but she unexpectedly leaves to stay in Venice with her uncles. On her return Micòl changes, coldly rejecting any show of affection from Giorgio. Instead she carries on an affair with Bruno, a man she claims to despise as too vulgar, crude, and leftist for her tastes. Peeking through a window Giorgio discovers Bruno and Micòl naked together. Heartbroken Giorgio is comforted by his father.
The political events close in. A journey to visit his brother Ernesto in Grenoble exposes Giorgio to news of the Nazi persecution, but he returns to Ferrara. With the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Bruno is recruited and sent to the Russian front. By 1943 all the young Jews who used to visit the Garden of the Finzi-Continis have been arrested. Bruno has been killed at the Russian front.
By the time the frail and sick Alberto dies, Italian soldiers are hunting down and rounding up the Jews of Ferrara. The Finzi-Continis are abruptly taken away from their contentment and illusory isolation. Separated from her parents Micòl and her frail and distraught grandmother are placed in a former classroom. They are surprised to find Giorgio’s father. Anxiously she asks him about Giorgio. He tells her that he hopes that Giorgio and the rest of his family has made it abroad. The fate of the Jews of Ferrara is to be deported to the concentration camps. Giorgio's father hopes that at least they won't be separated.
Images show happy days of Micòl and Bruno playing tennis and now the empty tennis court. The sequence is accompanied by the El male rachamim, a Jewish lament for the dead.

Tags: romantic, flashback

Review:
Chances are, if you are only casually aware of the world that you live in, your life imitates that of the Finzi-Continis, one of two families depicted in this film.
The beginning of de Sica's film follows the state of affairs in Italy shortly after the Fascist government of Mussolini has declared the ordinary tennis clubs off limits for Italian Jews-just the beginning for the Government's separatist stance.
The Jews in town react in various ways: Giorgio, who is in love with the daughter of the Finzi-Continis, is enraged; his father his philosophical; Giorgio's brother is upset only after being sent to France to study, and later, finding out to his horror about the German concentration camps.
It seems that years of prestige and social status have put them above the laws of the land.The walled garden of the Finzi-Continis is a symbol for the false security that people retain, unaware that problems on the outside may force them into reality.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is a great film for many reasons, one of which is how it forces us to take a proactive stance regarding the world that we live in.
In this haunting work by Vittoria De Sica an aristocratic Italian-Jewish family, the Finzi-Continis, serve as a symbol of European civilization in the hands of the brown shirts on the eve of World War II.
Seeing it again after thirty years I find myself saddened almost as much by the story of a stillborn, unrequited love as I am by the horror of the cattle cars to come.Dominique Sanda with her large, soft eyes is mesmerizing as the beautiful, enigmatic, but icy Micol Finzi-Contini.
However in this extremely disturbing film, De Sica is saying that it wasn't a rape, that the aristocracy of Europe (here represented by the Finzi-Continis of Ferrara, and in particular by the young and beautiful Micol) was a willing, even an eager, participant in the bestial conjoining.The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is far from perfect; some would say it is also far from De Sica's best work.
Consequently, for those of you who have not seen the film and do not want to risk having it spoiled for you, you should stop reading now and come back afterwards.Everything in the movie works toward setting up the cabana scene.
And there is the wall that separates the Finzi-Contini's garden of civilization from the brown shirts in the streets, a wall that also separates the rich from other people, particularly from the middle class who support the fascists (as we are told in the opening scene).
In THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS -- based on the autobiographical novel by Giorgio Bassani -- legendary Neorealist filmmaker, Vittorio de Sica, dramatizes the human cost of the `racial laws' gradually implemented against the Jews in Fascist Italy during the years 1938-43.
The more Bassani's young middle-class Jewish protagonist feels the brunt of Mussolini's anti-Semitic edicts encroaching upon him, the more he feels drawn to the aristocratic Jewish Finzi-Continis' estate -- their Edenic "garden" -- and to Micòl, the family's beautiful young daughter.
(This could the reason why some people find the film -- and its heavily symbolic, impressionistic style -- a little confusing and underwhelming.)For Giorgio -- both the naive hero and wisened author of the story -- Micòl embodies the mystery and allure of the Finzi-Continis, as well as their insularity and their apparent passivity in the face of the escalating Fascist crackdown.
The muted and deliberately spare representation of these characters and their feelings, as evidenced in their unusually restrained behavior, is meant to isolate and heighten the impact of a few devastating strokes of sudden realization and lucidity -- pointed indications that the protective spell of the Finzi-Continis has been finally broken.All in all, well-acted and gorgeously, languidly poetic in its imagery...yet, narrative-wise, the picture seems overly elliptical and ultimately opaque -- and leaves just a few too many rough fragments and loose ends lingering at the end of the story (not quite Proustian irony, maybe?).
It is important to note, however, that the last scene -- in which Giorgio's father meets the Finzi-Continis in a detention center -- is fictitious and does not appear in the novel, and Bassani had a falling out with de Sica about this..
It is shortly before WWII, a time when the Fascists are slowly taking away the rights and livelihoods of Jews, including the Finzi-Continis.But none of this seems to pass the walls of their magnificent garden, where the children Micol and Alberto often invite their friends.
The way this film evokes such youthful, quixotic yearning, or a woman's growing awareness of physical beauty's power, is splendid.The sadness I felt at the end came from knowing all along what would happen to all of them, rich and not-so-rich, and that they didn't recognize what lay in store for them until it was too late.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis was Vittorio De Sica's last hurrah, a masterpiece of neorealism, and timeless evocation of a time lost..
While undeniably not for the shallow or those who expect their movies to lay every detail out for them amid plenty of "action," THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (a parable on a latter day "Eden" of doomed innocence?) remains after more than a quarter century one of the most perfect reflections of the gradual process by which the Holocaust could have happened in a Europe which believed itself civilized.
Only our own action - or blind ignorance - can allow us out.Not a lot need be added to the perceptive comments already examining the details of this beautiful and moving film - but Americans, especially those of my fellow Republicans who are able to objectively look at their own country and leaders, should seriously examine the politicians who use fear and nebulous "enemies" to gain and hold power in the light of this film.
A question of degree not of kind.The garden is still seductively attractive, the country around it still relatively free, but will we follow the course the Finzi-Continis took or will we come actively out of our garden while there is time?.
Unfortunately for them, not even their social status can protect them from the doom that awaits them.Much like in "The Bicycle Thief" over 20 years earlier, Vittorio De Sica shows the desperate existences of a few people, surrounded by what many incorrectly assumed to be a joyful world.
Here we have a later masterpiece, not generally regarded as such.The basic story is of two Jewish families, the impeding brutality of fellow Italians and different approaches to life and love in the knowing face of doom.
Plus our hero goes from Passover at his house where the family is singing something vapid to the Finzi-Continis where they are doing something movie-like" looking into a glass to see the future.Third: we know this is not straight-on narrative, because the camera has a habit of drifting out of the narrative frame.
`The Garden of the Finzi-Continis' stands out from the scores of films about the Fascist persecution of Jews due, in no small part, to director Vittorio De Sica.
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..
One of the most celebrated foreign films in history, "The Garden of the Finzi-Contini" has been re-released so that people who missed it in 1971 can see the film restored as it was originally meant to be viewed -- then ask themselves WHAT WAS ALL THE FUSS ABOUT!!!!!This film recounts the fall of a Jewish family during Mussolini's rise in Italy during World War II.
Some old films hold up so beautifully, but I found the Garden of the Finzi-Contini's to be among the creaky dated ones.
The only way to understand the Finzi-Continis and their garden is as literary metaphors.
The power of the film is provided by the portrayal of Georgio's family, stuggling to understand and accommodate as their rights are taken away one at a time.
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.
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.
In the late 1930s, in Ferrara, Italy, the Finzi-Contini are one of the leading families, wealthy, aristocratic, urbane; they are also Jewish.
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.
Director Vittorio De Sica eschews the neo-realism that defined his earliest work and takes a more poetic approach with this story about a wealthy, privileged family who shut themselves away from the encroaching threat of fascism in the early days of WWII Italy.
They ultimately find that their elite status does not protect them from the fascist threat, and the quietly devastating ending shows the family being separated, perhaps forever, as they are rounded up and herded into lines like so much cattle.The ending makes this film memorable, but everything proceeding it struck me as rather lightweight, given the subject matter.
Sanda, whom I recently discovered from Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST (1970, 9/10), plays Micòl, the young daughter of the aristocratic Jewish Finzi-Contini family in Ferrara in the late 1930s, is the love interest of Giorgio (Capolicchio), from another Jewish but lower-class family, although they have been childhood sweethearts, Giorgio's courtship has yet come off.
As a war drama of ordinary people being shoved haphazardly by the humanity-defying heinous torrent of rabidness, the movie (maybe also Bassani's source material) obviously don't want to lay bare the ugly truth with pulverizing segments which one can generally assume would happen during the persecution of those Jews (cautiously the film finishes right before that), everything meanders with tepid temperature and sensuous palette, from jovial time on bicycle to the final illusory tennis court flashbacks (the difference between De Sica and Antonioni is immediate), but at any rate, it is wanting a bang to emanate the revelation which is always up in the air, not even the reveal of Micòl's lover with Sanda's bare-chest audacity and soul-searching stare.
In the Garden of the Finzi-Continis is a wonderful movie depicting the lives of a wealthy jewish family in Italy during the Holocaust era.
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.
This was probably Vittorio DeSica's last excellent film before his death in 1974 and it took me about 20 years to view it a second time.
The family of the Finzi-Continis are rich and Jewish and live in a huge manor behind locked gates and they love to have friends over for picnics and tennis.
DeSica still wanted to show the world what it was like in Italy during the darker times and even though he had a larger budget and professional actors in his films his attitude never really shifted.
After viewing this thought provoking film once again, maybe DeSica was showing us that Micol needed to get out of her haven and understand the world about her..
"Nostalgia is self destruction." – Adrienne Rich "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" takes place in fascist Italy during the reign of Mussolini.
Slowly a race is made invisible.Against this backdrop is told the story of two Jewish families, the affluent and aristocratic Finzi-Contini family and the middle class Bassani family.
When the family hosts tennis games for friends and family, de Sica shoots them like innocent forest nymphs, frolicking in Eden.Of course, outside the stone walls of the Finzi-Contini estate, trouble brews.
The Bassani family adjusts to Mussolini's racist laws with success at first, their father stating that despite their new limitations they can still live a reasonably secure existence.
Big mistake.The second half of the film focuses on the romance between Giorgio Bassani and Micol Finzi-Contini.
The Finzi-Continis are an aristocratic, wealthy, "connected" Jewish family in Italy in the 1930s-40s.
E.g., when (early on) Jews were prohibited from using public tennis courts, young Jews flocked to the estate garden of the aristocratic Finzi-Continis, which had tennis courts.
First off, the reason why I teared up, i.e., what I did like about the film especially: the relationship between Georgio and Micol.
Possibly the biggest problem of the film is that the scenes dealing with anti-Semitism and the onset of war never really coalesced with the problems surrounding Micol's and Georgio's relationship.
In _The Garden of the Finzi-Contini_, there is not even time for a proper conclusion.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is not just a physical safe space from the pressures and evils of a world about to be plunged into a second world war, but also a metaphysical memory of the mind, a last enduring remnant of the pre-war society where Jews were not third class citizens.
The garden remains in Giorgio's mind, long after the Jews rights have been taken from them until not even his father can justify it.
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 leaves the fate of the Finzi-Continis unresolved, but we know from the novel by Giorgio Bassani that none of them survived.
Much like Louis Malle's similarly themed film from 1987 AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS, Vittorio daSica's THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINI's is a meditative piece on the relatively safe haven of a group of people -- in this case, an entire family of wealthy Jews who enjoy a life of privilege as the horrors of World War II and anti-Semitism rages on.
DaSica's movie is a slow-moving lyrical poem which differs from his earlier Neo-Realist work, and captures in its running time this illusionary reality as if all this were a dream that the Finzi-Continis were having.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Much of the beginning and middle of the movie concerns Giorgio's unrequited infatuation with Micòl Finzi Contini.
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.