The Garden of the Finzi-Continis | |
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Italian | Il giardino dei Finzi Contini |
Directed by | Vittorio De Sica |
Screenplay by | Vittorio Bonicelli Ugo Pirro |
Based on | The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani |
Produced by | Arthur Cohn Gianni Hecht Lucari Artur Brauner |
Starring | Lino Capolicchio Dominique Sanda Helmut Berger Fabio Testi Romolo Valli |
Cinematography | Ennio Guarnieri |
Edited by | Adriana Novelli |
Music by | Manuel De Sica |
Production companies | Documento Film CCC-Filmkunst |
Distributed by | Titanus (Italy) CCC-Filmkunst (West Germany) |
Release date |
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Running time | 94 minutes |
Countries | Italy West Germany |
Language | Italian |
Box office | $1,590,000 [1] |
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Italian: Il giardino dei Finzi Contini) is a 1970 historical war drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica. The screenplay by Ugo Pirro and Vittorio Bonicelli adapts Italian Jewish author Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel, about the lives of an upper-class Jewish family in Ferrara during the Fascist era. The film stars Lino Capolicchio, Dominique Sanda, Helmut Berger, Romolo Valli, and Fabio Testi in his breakthrough role.
An Italian and West German co-production, [2] The Garden of the Finzi-Continis was entered into the 21st Berlin International Film Festival and won the Golden Bear. The film won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and earned a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
In 1938 in Ferrara, the Finzi Contini are a rich Jewish family living in a mansion set in a park. When Jews are banned from the city's tennis club, the family allow the friends of their two children, Micòl and the sickly Alberto, to use their private tennis court. Among them are Giorgio, son of a Jewish businessman, and Giampiero, a communist and a gentile. Giorgio has been in love with Micòl since early adolescence, but she is ambivalent.
As war approaches, Giorgio's brother moves to France to pursue his studies while Giorgio, close to graduation, decides to stay in Ferrara and, when Jews are banned from the university library, the Finzi-Contini allow him to use their private library. Micòl leaves to stay in Venice and on her return to Ferrara she definitively rejects Giorgio.
In 1940, when Italy enters the war, Giampiero is conscripted while Giorgio as a Jew is exempt. On his last night in Ferrara, Giampiero meets up with Giorgio and, when they part at midnight, Giorgio has an urge to see Micòl one more time. Climbing the wall of the Finzi Contini family park, he notices a light in the garden hut and, looking in, sees a naked Micòl beside Giampiero.
In 1943, amid rumours of further measures against the Jews, Giorgio goes underground and the police arrest the whole Finzi Contini family, holding them with the other Jews of the city in a school. Micòl finds herself herded with her frail grandmother into the same classroom she attended as a child. There she sees Giorgio's father, who informs her that Giorgio has escaped. The two embrace, their future as unclear as the fog hanging over the city. Giampiero has died in the Soviet Union.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis marked the debut or near-debut for some of its stars, notably the actors who played the two adult Finzi-Contini children, Micòl and Alberto. For Dominique Sanda (Micòl), it was her first Italian feature film (followed by such films as The Conformist and 1900 ). For Helmut Berger (Alberto), it was his third feature film.
The director seriously considered entrusting the lead role to singer Patty Pravo, who had to refuse due to too many work commitments.
In Bassani's novel, the narrator is assumed to be the author himself. In the film, De Sica tells the story entirely through dialogue, with the narrator being the protagonist, Giorgio. The film ends with the Finzi-Contini family's deportation, whereas in the novel, Giorgio, who fled abroad in time to avoid this, recalls the story of his youth and his first impossible love, after 14 years.
Initially Giorgio Bassani cooperated in the drafting of the dialogues and the screenplay of the film but after some disagreements and misunderstandings, the writer and the director entered into open conflict (also due to the fact that in the film the relationship between Micòl and Giampiero is made explicit, which is not present in the novel). Bassani asked that his name be removed from the credits of the film. His name was duly removed as one of its script-writers and the opening credits just state that it was ‘freely derived from the novel by Giorgio Bassani'.
Villa Ada near Rome was used for the garden, while the Finzi Contini villa is the Litta Bolognini villa in Vedano al Lambro, a municipality in the Brianza area, adjacent to the Monza Park. The entrance to the garden in the film is really in Ferrara, in Corso Ercole I d'Este , near where Bassani had imagined it. The other exteriors were shot in Ferrara; noteworthy are the Estense castle and the city walls, the Palazzo dei Diamanti, the Cathedral of San Giorgio and also some famous streets.
It received positive acclaim from international critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 94% based on 16 reviews, with an average score of 7.9/10. [3]
In 1972, 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. [4] It won the Golden Bear at the 21st Berlin International Film Festival in 1971. [5] It was De Sica's penultimate film.
The restored digital version, curated by the Istituto Luce Cinecittà and performed at the "Studio Cine" in Rome and "The rediscovered image" in Bologna, was presented in the spring of 2015.
Vittorio De Sica was an Italian film director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement.
Cesare Zavattini was an Italian screenwriter and one of the first theorists and proponents of the Neorealist movement in Italian cinema.
Ferrara is a city and comune (municipality) in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, capital of the province of Ferrara. As of 2016, it had 132,009 inhabitants. It is situated 44 kilometres northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream of the Po River, located 5 km north. The town has broad streets and numerous palaces dating from the Renaissance, when it hosted the court of the House of Este. For its beauty and cultural importance, it has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
Giorgio Bassani was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and international intellectual.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is an Italian historical novel by Giorgio Bassani, published in 1962. It chronicles the relationships between the narrator and the children of the Finzi-Contini family from the rise of Benito Mussolini until the start of World War II.
My Voyage to Italy is a personal documentary by acclaimed Italian-American director Martin Scorsese. The film is a voyage through Italian cinema history, marking influential films for Scorsese and particularly covering the Italian neorealism period.
Helmut Berger was an Austrian actor, known for his portrayal of narcissistic and sexually ambiguous characters. He was one of the stars of European cinema in the late 1960s and 1970s, and is regarded as a sex symbol and pop icon of that period.
Finzi is a surname. Notable people with the name include:
Dominique Marie-Françoise Renée Varaigne professionally known as Dominique Sanda, is a French actress.
Romolo Valli was an Italian actor.
Fabio Testi is an Italian actor. After growing up witnessing film work done around Lake Garda, Testi entered the sets of the film and began work as a stuntman and a double on set, where he worked as a stuntman on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Testi continued stunt work and getting roles in low budget genre films until he was cast in Vittorio De Sica's film The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Following this film, Testi became a star in Italy, appearing in some artistic films by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi and Claude Chabrol. Testi also continued to work in poliziotteschi genre films in the 1970s as well as a few gialli, and gained infamy for his publicised relationships with actresses Ursula Andress and Charlotte Rampling.
Valerio Zurlini was an Italian stage and film director and screenwriter.
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Jamie McKendrick is a British poet and translator.
Lino Capolicchio was an Italian actor, screenwriter, and director. He won a special David di Donatello acting award for his role in Vittorio de Sica's 1970 film, The Garden of the Finzi-Contini.
Giorgio De Vincenzi (1884–1965), was an Italian painter and etcher. He was a versatile artist, using diverse techniques and specialised in landscapes and portraiture.
The Holocaust in Italy was the persecution, deportation, and murder of Jews between 1943 and 1945 in the Italian Social Republic, the part of the Kingdom of Italy occupied by Nazi Germany after the Italian surrender on 8 September 1943, during World War II.
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The Ferrara Ghetto was established by an edict of Cardinal Cennini dated 23 August 1624, in one of the oldest areas of the city, a short distance from the Cathedral of San Giorgio (Ferrara) and the Castello Estense. It was permanently closed in 1859.