Touches You

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

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). We see a series of flashbacks of Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio), middle class Jewish childhood friend to Micol, and how he used to be looking for him having feelings for her, and the two of them got somewhat closer from being friends to him having special attention from her, he tries at one point to make an advance, but she rejects him. 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. Giorgio, who is definitely in love with Micol is a frequent visitor in the library at the Finzi-Contini's villa, and Micol does seem to show return feeling, but following a visit to Venice and her uncles she rejects all his affection, and continues an affair with Bruno, Giorgio seems them naked together through a window and is heartbroken, so he gets comfort from his father. 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. Also starring Camillo Angelini-Rota as Micol's Father - Prof. Ermanno Finzi-Contini, Katina Morisani as Micol's Mother and Inna Alexeievna as Micol's Grandmother. 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. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it was nominated for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, and it won the BAFTA for the UN Award, and it was nominated for Best Cinematography. Very good!

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. The Finzi-Contini's, however, believe that their position of wealth and their very home will shield them from being touched, and they move on, oblivious to the world outside, in a frozen period of time and space that seems, for a moment, to spare them, until it becomes rather clear that the walls that so protected them are beginning to crumble and that they are headed towards an inevitable train wreck which will destroy all that they know. As their rights and the rights of the Jewish people are stripped away from them, they find themselves suddenly awake into a reality they cannot understand, but must move into. 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 filtered lens only maximizes the almost enchanted beauty that pours through from the screen and onto the viewers' eyes; indeed, this is nostalgia for a time gone by, a trip down memory lane and a subtle incursion into a denouncement of the horrors of war which never rears its ugly head but whose presence ultimately swallows a family, whole.

The Italian people probably felt a moral degradation knowing that their government had participated in exterminating Jews during WWII. "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" was probably their way of showing that they were atoning for it. It tells of the Jewish Finzi-Contini family in Ferrara in the 1930s. They are a very well off family (with a false sense of security), and many of the people within the family are falling for each other. 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. Wonderful.

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. The story follows Giorgio as he tries to surf outside his social class and win over the cute but cold-as-ice Micol. He fails, along with the film.This is NOT a great film. Like many period pieces, it's a stately bore. The plot and character development take forever to build any steam. Just when you begin to care a little about the characters -- the movie ends. Or, more accurately, just stops, dead in in tracks, not a single plotline resolved. Characters just disappear along the way, randomly, with no dramatic impact. It's photography was way too detached from it's subject matter until it's too late. In the end, too frustrating to be entertaining and too boring to be thought-provoking.THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS holds its audience at arm's length. As a result, Giorgio's romantic plight, which occupies considerable screen time, has a limited emotional impact. Since we never really get close to him, aspects of the movie are less compelling than they might otherwise have been. The film's often-detached perspective allows us to focus more clearly on presentation and issues, but at the expense of caring about the characters.DeSica directed many masterpieces but this film does not qualify as a masterpiece nor does it stand the test of time.