Written, directed, shot & edited by Ermanno Olmi, his best known/most acclaimed title (if perhaps not his finest), it swept the Italian & International award circuits, follows a year in the life of four peasant families on an estate farm in turn-of-the-last century Lombardy, Northern Italy. Feeling like a documentary miraculously made at the time, you might think Frederick Wiseman was making his fly-on-the-wall portrait films in the late 1800s, no wonder it won BAFTA’s Flaherty Documentary Award. Closely following farm laborers & their families living under the ‘protection’ of their lord/landowner, their homes, furnishings and three fourths of any yearly profits all property of the master, they might be American sharecroppers. A three-hour length makes it sound like a worthy slog, but Olmi keeps it involving all the way along with his perfectly chosen amateur cast. Details in work, play, school and courtship completely fascinating and utterly convincing.* The film’s chef d'oeuvre may be the annual fall slaughter of a pig (end credits should read: ‘One pig definitely injured in the making of this film’), but an even greater set piece involves that enigmatic title as a father makes a replacement wooden clog overnight so his young son can get back to school the next morning. A thrilling set piece for one, smaller but not dissimilar to Tarkovsky’s casting of the great church bell in ANDREI RUBLEV/’66.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *A rare moment that doesn’t convince sees Olmi drop the ball historically when one of the managers plays an old acoustic recording (the workers never having heard a recording before are amazed), but Olmi jumps more than a decade ahead of late 1800s technique by having its Verdi baritone aria accompanied by a full symphony orchestra rather than a piano reduction. Something that wouldn’t be attempted for more than a decade.
No comments:
Post a Comment