The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) User Reviews

Haunting DeSica film

[rosscinema · 8/10 · 15 October 2003]

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. I certainly understand it more this time than the first time I viewed it. Story is set in the late 1930's in Ferrara, Italy with the impending war looming on the horizon. 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. One of the friends is Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio) and he is in love with Micol Finzi-Contini (Dominique Sanda) and they have known each other since they both were kids but Micol does not love Giorgio. He's persistent in his affections but Micol lives in an isolated world hidden behind the gates and her demeanor is very cold and malicious. Meanwhile, Giorgio's father (Romolo Valle) seems to be oblivious to what is happening in the world and utters "It's not that bad". Mussolini has enacted laws that forbid Jews from going to school, entering the library and other restrictions. One night Giorgio discovers Micol having an affair with his more Fascist friend Bruno (Fabio Testi) and Micol notices him in the window but seems not to care.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

While DeSica somewhat abandoned his neo-realism approach later in his career this does have an aura of those wonderful films like "The Bicycle Thief" and "Umberto D". 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. This film is primarily about the two lead characters played by Capolicchio and Sanda. Even with war upon them they both seemed to be in their own world. Giorgio became a very angry and heartbroken man and even with soldiers walking around his city he seemed to only care about Micol's rejection of him. But late in the film he did snap out of it and escaped. He didn't allow what happened to him to get the better of him. Unfortunately, Micol and her family waited too long and were rounded up to be sent to camps. There are instances in this film that I thought Micol was awaiting to be taken by the Fascists and Nazi's. It's one of the reasons she slept with Bruno and seemed unperturbed by the events around her. Remember what Giorgio's father told him? He said, "In life, in order to understand, to really understand the world, you must die at least once. So it's better to die young, when there's still time left to recover and live again". 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.

Certainly a very good film, but not the masterpiece everyone has touted it as being (8/10)

[zetes · 8/10 · 7 October 2000]

SPOILERS AHEAD:

There are many, many movies about WWII, both about the battles and about the condition of life for the people involved, especially the situation of the Jews in Europe. When someone makes a movie on this latter subject, it is very difficult for anyone to criticize it. 1998's _Life is Beautiful_ received some criticism, but mainly because it contained comic elements where people felt there should be only tragedy. But if the film is a drama, then it is basically untouchable by critics and viewers. And as for this film itself, it was directed by an old master who had been out of it for a while. Even if the film was terrible, there was no way, when it came out in the early 70s, that anyone was going to call it less than a masterpiece, an instant classic, if you will.

Well, this film is in no way terrible. In fact, it is very good. It affected me enough where I did tear up a bit. I was touched at certain points. But I also was acutely aware of some of the film's shortcomings as I watched.

First off, the reason why I teared up, i.e., what I did like about the film especially: the relationship between Georgio and Micol. I connected with it instantly because I have been through similar circumstances. It is rather painful, let me tell you. I longed for Micol right along side with Georgio, and felt utterly rejected simultaneously with him. This is the way one should experience a great film. There were two more relationships that were really well developed and deeply felt by me, both involving Georgio: Georgio and his father, a very good character played by a marvelous actor, and Georgio and Malnate.

The rest of the characters were very sloppily made. Did Alberto Finzi-Contini exist for any other reason than to create that great funeral procession scene? He was barely in the movie at all. I had thought they had forgotten him for a long time, then they finally came back to him, and he was next to death. The Finzi-Contini family was hardly existent. I thought the father was a butler until very near the end of the film. A cheap joke is made about the centegenarian grandmother's inability to hear well (although this character had a very poignant scene at the very end of the film).

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. The latter theme dominated the film, while the former only appeared in the background. This structure would have been fine, but the background section of the film never seemed to influence much the foreground. Georgio could have just as easily have fallen in love with Micol without the war going on. This is not what puts stress on their relationship. Possibly the main theme that de Sica was trying to get through in the film was that our personal lives do not naturally care about what is happening in society, but society keeps trying to push its way into our personal lives. Unfortunately, it only works to a certain extent. The film was too short for its subject matter. It is only 94 minutes long. If it had been two hours or even two and a half, the two parts would have fit together better and the main theme would have been a lot more potent. One of my very favorite films has the exact same theme: _The Unbearable Lightness of Being_, where people attempt to love each other in Czechoslovakia while the Soviets oppress them. It is three hours long, and it works on every level. In _The Garden of the Finzi-Contini_, there is not even time for a proper conclusion. Micol's story is finished, or at least as finished as it needs to be, but what happened to Georgio? His father just informs us that he left. Why can't we see him leave? We don't need an enormous explanation from him, but just a subtle scene, as is the film's style, where he packs and talks to his mother maybe. Surely he hasn't gotten Micol out of his mind that quickly. I realize it was in his best interests to get the heck out of Italy right away, but I can't believe he doesn't at least think for a moment whether or not he should do something on Micol's behalf. I'm fine that he doesn't. I would bet that in the novel, this sort of scene appears. It should have also been in the film. I give the film an 8/10, mostly for the true-to-life pain it caused me concerning the one-sided love.

Literary, pretty and melancholy

[brig0027 · 6/10 · 28 June 2000]

Some old films hold up so beautifully, but I found the Garden of the Finzi-Contini's to be among the creaky dated ones. I think it must be a much better novel than movie. The only way to understand the Finzi-Continis and their garden is as literary metaphors. The dying brother?--maybe the death of the world they knew?? The unpredictable, cruel Micol? --The fate of Jews who act as though they are not Jewish--assimilated on the outside, confused and hollow on the inside. She flirts with but rejects a Jewish man who loves her, and has casual sex with an Aryan faschist whom she considers crude--just as the Ferrara Jews seem flirt with and reject their Jewishness and submit to the loss of their civil liberties. The garden?--the carefree innocence lost in the Holocaust. And so on. It's worth seeing for the beautiful young men and women--all burnished gold. 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. They are heartbreaking.

Imperfect, but unforgettable

[DennisLittrell · 12 May 2001]

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. Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio) is her childhood friend, a boy from a middle-class Jewish family, now grown up. He's in love with her, but her feelings for him are that of a sister. He is confused by her warmth, and then as he tries to get close, her cool rejection. It has often been expressed metaphorically that Europe in the thirties was raped by fascism. 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. Certainly it comes after his prime. The editing is a little too severe in places, while some of the scenes are too loosely focused. Nonetheless this is an enormously powerful film that finds its climax in one of the most disturbing scenes in all of cinema. There is little point in discussing this film without looking at this scene. 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. We see the dog several times, hinting at a crude, animalistic side to Micol. 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). We see Micol leading Giorgio by the hand about the estate, but always when he tries to caress her, she pulls away. Finally she explains to him why she doesn't love him. She says, "lovers want to overwhelm each other...[but]...we are as alike as two drops of water...how could we overwhelm and want to tear each other...it would be like making love with a brother..." But hearing these words is not enough. Giorgio goes to the wall one last time, sees a red bicycle there (red and black were the colors of the Nazi party) and knows that Micol is with someone else. He climbs the wall and finds the dog outside the cabana so that he knows she is within. In the opening scene she referred to the cabana with the German "Hütte," adding that now "we'll all have to learn German." What he sees when he looks through the window fills him with a kind of stupefying horror, as it does us. Not a word is spoken. He sees her, he sees who she is with and what the circumstances are. She sees him, turns on the light so that there can be no mistake and they stare wordlessly at one another. She projects not shame, but a sense of "This is who I am. I would say I'm sorry, but it wouldn't change anything. This is what I'm drawn to."

What is expressed in this essentially symbolic scene, acted out in sexual terms, is what happened to Europe. Micol is at once the love he wanted so much, deflowered by an anonymous, but clearly fascist man, and she is also the aristocracy of Europe, polluted by fascism.

I wonder if it is just a coincidence that the famous poem by Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess," is also set in Ferrara. In that poem the narrator reveals himself through the unfeeling brutality of his speech and actions to be, although an aristocrat, an incipient fascist. I also wonder if De Sica is saying that the Jews in some sense contributed to the horror that befell them, and by extension, all of humanity. We see this expressed in the person of Giorgio's father who continually insists that it's not that bad yet, as step by step they lose their status as citizens, a prelude to the dehumanization that is the precursor of genocide. Certainly the closing scenes in which the Jews of Italy are seen to be compliant as they are led to the slaughter suggests as much. I know that the central feeling expressed by Jews after the war and especially in Israel was simply, never again. Nevertheless, there is a certain sense of the inevitable about this film that I find particularly disturbing. Passivity in sexual terms, a "giving in" to one's nature is one thing. A passivity in political terms is quite another, and yet it is part of the power of this film to show us how they are related in our psyches.

Underwhelmed

[lasttimeisaw · 6/10 · 17 December 2013]

Another 70s Oscar BEST FOREIGN PICTURE victor, from the versatile Italian actor/director Vittorio De Sica, in fact this is only my second De Sica's film (after MARRIAGE Italian STYLE 1964, 8/10 and disregarding the medley BOCCACCIO '70 1962, 6/10), thus admittedly a major motivating force to watch this one is the star appeal, namely Sanda and Berger.

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. Meanwhile Micòl's effeminately indisposed brother Alberto (Berger) brings his burly friend Bruno (Testi) to the family and initially Micòl antagonizes him with her affected pomposity, but the ensuing happenings will dish Giorgio's hope and Micòl eventually turns out to be a token victim of the tumult and a failed attempt to dare the purity of Jewish ethnicity.

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.

Like Visconti, De Sica evinces ethereal and superior beauty from his young cast, say no more to knockouts like Sanda and Berger (who is purely existed for his godsend delicacy and impeccable face), even an ordinary-looking Capolicchio and the future action star Testi, have been sculpted meticulously with soft light and fond close-ups. Valli, on the other hand, is prominent as Giorgio's father, illustrates lucidly as a spokesman for an elder generation frustrated by their fate and also impotent to save their children.

As a double winner for an Oscar and a Golden Berlin Bear, it doesn't live up to my expectation, maybe it is a common attribute for Italian melodrama, its across-the-board appeal dwindles as time passes by, Visconti's SENSO (1954, 7/10) is too saccharine for my palate and this one is somewhat rather undemanding under the reigns of a maestro like De Sica.

How Safe is Your World?

[Preston-10 · 10/10 · 3 May 2001]

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. To the Finzi-Continis, though, it doesn't really matter. They're different from the other Jews because wealth and privilege have bred them into a family as proud as it is vulnerable. They hardly seem to know, or even care, about the fact that their rights are slowly being taken away. 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 film seems to promise that nothing will change and that everything will remain the same. Interestingly, de Sica films the garden in a way that enforces this theme of false security. He never orients us visually with the rest of the city, so we can never tell how big or how small the garden is. Have you ever felt uneasy being somewhere not knowing the exact dimensions of your boundary? That's the feeling we get here with shots of the garden that seem to stretch on forever.

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. There's nothing wrong with feeling secure but it's important to try to take an objective stance with reference to the world that we live in. And you certainly don't want to be on the outside looking in to those who have realized it already.

In the Garden of the Elite

[evanston_dad · 7/10 · 10 April 2007]

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. This isn't a movie I think back on as a masterpiece, and I think its reputation rests somewhat on the fact that De Sica, a respected master, directed it.

Grade: B+

A great adaptation from a freat novel

[jeanserge21 · 10/10 · 23 July 2006]

I first heard a radio adaptation from the Garden of the Finzi Contini and afer that read the book. I thought it would be difficult to make an adaptation to cinema. Indeed, the book is above all psychological (or romantic in the literary meaning of the 19th century)i.e the narrator describing his inner world and his sufferings...

However, Vittorio de Sica succeeded in expressing this without using monologue, without making a too slow picture... The music is very good too... the images are wonderful...

I must correct some commentaries Malnate, Micol's lover is not a fascist but a communist... There is also a difference with the book : in the book we do not know for sure that Micol and Malnate were lovers, it is an assumption whereas it is an evidence in the film...

In spite of this differences, this picture deserves a 10 out of 10!

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

[jboothmillard · 7/10 · 17 January 2014]

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!

the music during the final credits

[delgrandegl · 10/10 · 3 October 2006]

I just watched the DVD and had not seen the movie in many years. I found it every bit as moving as I had remembered from my first viewing. This included the Prayer For the Dead (El Moleh Rachamim) magnificently sung as the final credits rolled. I am not Jewish so I had to do some "googling" to learn that El Moleh...is indeed a prayer for the dead. What moved me so apart from the singer's mournfully beautiful voice were the names Aushwitz, Maidenek, Treblinka et. al. interpolated into the text. It reminded me of the penultimate paragraph in Andre Schwartz-Bart's extraordinary novel of the Holacaust, The Last Of The Just where the names of the death camps are artfully placed among the repeated words "And praised Be The Lord". Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts.

Beautiful

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 16 March 2017]

In the late 1930s, in Ferrara, Italy, the Finzi-Contini are one of the leading families, wealthy, aristocratic, urbane; they are also Jewish. Their adult children, Micol and Alberto, gather a circle of friends for constant rounds of tennis and parties at their villa with its lovely grounds, keeping the rest of the world at bay. 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. It won the Golden Bear at the 21st Berlin International Film Festival in 1971. It is considered de Sica's penultimate film, though this depends on how you count.

The film itself is very beautiful, and the quality would make me think 1980s more than 1970. Italian cinema tends to be behind American cinema in technology, and I am quite impressed with what they were able to achieve here. It really is something of a masterpiece in the look. The characters are well fleshed-out, and I am not surprised that some of the actors went on to bigger things (e.g. Helmut Berger).

One thing that strikes me as interesting today (2017) is how films around the Holocaust have been consistently successful in awards season. This was almost 50 years ago, and today we still get the Holocaust film again and again. That is not a criticism of the filmmakers. There is no story more powerful in the last 100 years. It just strikes me as interesting how film has chosen that as the nexus, the focal point. You might think American films would try to pivot to 9/11 (admittedly a far, far smaller event), but this has not really happened.

One of the best - the tragedy is its continued timeliness

[eschetic · 9/10 · 12 August 2005]

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.

The tragic love story allows us into the garden. 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. The realization is inescapable that the world of the Finzi-Continis is not that far removed from our own. 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?

A dumb and boring romance saved by Vittorio De Sica's unusual War Conflicts.

[SAMTHEBESTEST · 6/10 · 8 October 2021]

Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini / The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) : Brief Review -

A dumb and boring romance saved by Vittorio De Sica's unusual War Conflicts. Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini bored me for a while, actually many times. I was literally saying the dialogues a moment before the character would say it on screen. It was that predictable. The film is based upon Giorgio Bassani's 1962 novel of the same name which tells the story of the Finzi-Continis, a noble family of Ferrara, during the Jewish persecution in Italy's 1930s. Giorgio and Micol are childhood friends and even have feelings for each other but Micol turns him down because the mixed marriage is banned in the country. Giorgio somehow survives this heartache but can't forget her and comes back. That scene when he comes back her house to meet her and says, 'I love you,' and i was like holy smoke. What the hell is this? A 1920's silent film or what? About three-minute slow scene just to say this and expectedly she denies and finally he says the same thing again that, 'I won't come here again'. Hey buddy, she said the same already then why the hell did you not understand it? And after that, the same silly follow-up. He tails her House and finds her naked with the man she despises. What the hell? Dear Vittorio De Sica, i am a big fan of your work but what the bloody heck was that? Were you making a melodrama in 1920s? I just couldn't digest the fact that the intellegent director like Sica chose such a dumb romance to show War conflicts of Italy. Thankfully, the war conflicts came out fine i mean that was expected because that's something realistic and artistic instead of that soap opera of childhood love becoming sort of obsession in the age when one is supposed to be more matured. Their country and society is about to be torn off and what his friends and Father had to ask him, that how's relation with Micol.. seriously? Well, this one is Sica's weakest in my opinion.

RATING - 6/10*

By - #samthebestest.

Hardly a "masterpiece"

[bregund · 5/10 · 1 September 2022]

This shallow, flat film with unengaging characters and one-note storyline seems to want to say something but, muffled by the ponderous weight of its clothing budget and cinematography, fails to connect with the viewer in any meaningful way. I'm always amused by how many "masterpieces" there are in IMDB comments, a word that's usually reserved for things that are exceptional. Is it exceptional to endure an entire film filled with the exact same scene over and over, where Giorgio and Micol are on the verge of becoming a couple but then she shoos him away? You can only watch that so many times before it becomes irritating. On top of all that, the continuity gaps are confusing...one moment Malnate is off to war, the next moment his death is casually announced by the main character. How? When? Where? At the end of the film, Giorgio and the rest of the family have been safely removed to the countryside. How? When? Where? You'll have to imagine it, because you won't see it in the film. Confusing.

Bittersweet and elusive...

[jawills · 22 May 2000]

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. Psychologically, this compulsion seems to stem from a deep emotional attachment to a perpetually innocent, untroubled state of childhood, which both Micòl and her garden seem to represent. Throughout the film, there is a marked conflict between childhood and adulthood, between the distant past and the immediate present, between the act of retreating into a world of comfortable illusions and confronting a world of harsh and bitter realities.

I found this particular aspect of the story very fascinating, although too tantalizingly obscure and open-ended -- and thus, not quite as illuminating or fulfilling as it might have been were it more clearly explained. (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. She always appears distant and unattainable, with no obvious reasons for her actions, and never really provides a direct, comprehensible explanation for her insistent rejection of Giorgio or for what appears to be a subtle streak of cruelty towards him. Her conversation with him always seems deliberately vague, and her refusal to make any further connection with him has a curious, almost perverse kind of fatalism about it. Again, this is another feature of the film that is certainly intriguing -- and strangely seductive -- but, alas, never quite pays off enough to become fully understandable to either the protagonist or the audience. When the Fascists finally do arrest the Finzi-Continis and confiscate their estate it comes as something of a surprise. 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?). In spite of this peculiar drawback, the film finishes very effectively, and by the final desolate shots, you are left with an unexpectedly intense feeling of loss and anguish. 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.

Background

[kosmasp · 6/10 · 18 August 2010]

There is a really good review of this movie by another user (his summary is "imperfect but unforgettable"), so if you can check that out please. If you read it, you will also understand that there is a lot of (background) knowledge/info in this comment. Which begs the question: Do you have to know all of this (like the poem that utilizes the same location?) to fully understand and enjoy this movie? Or is it possible to watch it without prior knowledge?

It's a difficult question to answer. But as it is, I can only answer that this indeed is unforgettable. It's story core is really heavy and while there are some sub-stories interwoven into this, you always have this feeling of uncertainty running through it. Still the characters are not far from blandness and never fully engage you. The story seems confusing (though it is simple enough, it seems to be more complicated), which takes you a bit off it. (or that could be the case, depending on your concentration on it) There is space for improvement on this, though it does not take anything away from the ending ...

A powerful film

[uscoa · 9/10 · 24 October 2000]

`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. His veteran hands crafting an excellent story into a masterpiece.

The story focuses on a young Italian-Jew and his interaction and quest for romance with the daughter of a wealthy Jewish aristocrat. The trials of their relationship coming during the growth of Fascism in Italy in the late-1930s. Even the viewer can feel the segregation closing on the two young people and their families.

But even the superb drama of the film cannot hold a candle to the awesome cinematography of beautiful scenery that adds vitality to the film. The acting is good, mostly from the supporting cast, but occasional spouts of brilliance come from all directions.

Exceptional. 9/10 stars.

Needing more polish cimematically, but if you read in it, you'll be rewarded

[tuoutre-1 · 7/10 · 18 November 2007]

The film, to me, is about survival of one's identity. Micol identifies with her childhood and could not let go of it in relation to her childhood sweetheart, Georgio, even while her physical desires develop and intrude. The conflict in her mind is exposed by her enticing Georgio but turning cold when he makes the moves on her. She said she could not breath.

Similar to what happened to the Jews of Italy, they were drawn in by their identity. For the Italian Jews, they identified with the Italian civilization, thinking they were a part of it. Georgio identifies with Micol. As the Jews were slowly extracted from theirs, they kept on with those early ideas. Same with Georgio, he kept on with pursuing her. Then finally when he saw she had sex with someone completely different from him and her---and she even turns the light on to show him---he snaps out of it. He finally grasps the physial reality of the situation. The process is just as his father says: better you die (your relationship with Micol, your identity as being part of her world and visa versa) young and hence you have more time to start from zero. And for the Jews: better your notions of being part of the civility of Italian society die early so you have time to rebuild elsewhere.

The others in the garden didn't die in time and so became unwilling prisoners, in contrast to their voluntary enprisonment behind the walls of their own estate. Once in prison, Micol finally behaves as a responsible, caring adult, but alas, too late.

Prior to that, while in France, Georgio was told of the Nazi horrors and how one man escapes by shedding his identity and saying he has converted to Nazism. Georgio says he won't escape because he had too many ties back in Italy. His identity then was bound to the fantasy of the Jews in the garden, even though his realistic father says they are not his type.

Survival of one's identity has been the cause of much suffering when outside, physical, uncontrollable reality intrudes. Unfortunately, the identity we construct in order to feel a sense of belonging which gives us a sense of power, often subtracts from a balanced, caring, and even civilized way. As a result, religious, nationalist conflicts have caused too much suffering to justify the gains offered by these simple-minded (childish?) views.

a garden of no delights for those who ran afoul of the state

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 4 August 2005]

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.

Melancholic but unfocussed on main drama

[dierregi · 6/10 · 29 January 2024]

Giorgio is a shy Jewish young man from Ferrara and in love with young, and aristocratic Micol Finzi-Contini. They know each other from a tender age, but Giorgio never had a chance to approach her. Even the racial laws may have a silver lining, because when Giorgio is expelled from the Tennis Club, the Jewish Finzi-Contini open their lavish tennis court to the local youth, especially to other Jews.

Micol sort of flirts with Giorgio, leading him on, while rejecting the advances of extroverted Malnate. While the tragedy of deportation looms closer, the love story between Giorgio and Micol never takes off, because eventually she rejects him with a flimsy excuse, and allows him to witness her sexual encounter with Malnate.

I watched this movie as a teenager and I was negatively impressed by Micol's cruel behaviour. In the movie Giorgio witness from outside a garden hut, a naked Micol, lying next to the asleep Malnate. She even switches on the light of the hut to show better her naked body to Giorgio.

This for me was gratuitous voyeurism and detrimental to the tragic story. The whole movie focusses a bit too much on the beautiful Dominque Sanda who kind of overshadows the tragic destiny of all her family, the cruelty of the situation and the fact that she possibly was never in love in Giorgio and there was no need for her flirting.

I guess the movie suffers from a male POV and maybe the salacious scene was included to uplift the audience. Still, a debatable choice.

The soundtrack, besides being a tad too gloomy is terribly dated. Definitely worth a watch but I am not surprised the author of the novel asked for his name to be removed from the credits. Maybe he didn't appreciate the slightly misogynist, voyeuristic approach either.

A stunner

[JasparLamarCrabb · 10/10 · 17 May 2013]

A stunner. Vittorio De Sica's late career masterpiece exposes the hopeless plight a lot of Italian Jews faced as the lunatic Mussolini got further and further into bed with Hitler during WWII. The Finzi-Continis, a well-to-do family of intellectuals fail to realize the rising tide of anti-semitism around them as their vast estate becomes more and more a sanctuary for their equally blind friends. Unrequited love and missed chances at romance are dwarfed in importance as the Nazis move in. This is a very unsettling movie as you're well aware of what is going to happen to these people. De Sica (and five or six uncredited scriptwriters) creates a real sense of dread and the film is populated with an excellent cast. Lino Capolicchio is the standout, hopelessly in love with Finzi-Contini débutante Dominique Sanda. As Sanda's infirm brother, Helmut Berger personifies an entire race of people about to be systematically eliminated. Fabio Testi and Romolo Valli (excellent as Capolicchio's grotesquely optimistic father) are in it too.

A blurry commentary on the danger of isolationism...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 3 October 2006]

Maddeningly slow-moving account of an aristocratic Italian family during the onset of World War II who conveniently ignore what is going on in the world beyond their fabled garden of contentment. 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.

A beautiful, poignant masterpiece.

[dalben · 2 January 1999]

The Finzi-Continis are a wealthy and privileged Italian family. 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. One of their friends, Georgio, is hopelessly in love with the beautiful Micol. 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.

A deserved classic

[Bob Pr. · 8/10 · 17 November 2010]

This is a parable (& a wake-up call) to all those who feel sufficiently insulated from global pressures so that they feel immune to the effects to which most other people are subject.

The Finzi-Continis are an aristocratic, wealthy, "connected" Jewish family in Italy in the 1930s-40s. Mussolini's Fascist party followed the lead of Germany's Hitler/Nazis' anti-Semitism and purging of Jews, at first slowly following suit (denying Jews library use was among the earlier, then denying university graduation for Jews, then forbidding marriage between Jews and non-Jews, then denying any possibility of non-Jews working for Jews), etc., etc. They increasingly tightened their anti-Semitic noose.

The social position of the Finzi-Continis and their walled garden seemed (at first) to keep these gathering restrictions at bay and inconsequential. 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. At first, they have little concern with the gradually tightening restrictions, the increasing anti-Semitism, and no sense there's a growing tsunami.

But restrictions kept tightening much further.

I saw the movie at a retired university faculty film series presenting great films. There were a number of hankies daubing eyes at the conclusion.

I had problems keeping some of the film's 20-ish male characters distinct from each other (maybe those fluent in Italian wouldn't have that problem) as well as in some of the flashbacks to earlier times. Also the English subtitles sometimes quit the screen before I'd completely read them.

BUT, all in all, this is a VERY important, consequential film that I've wanted to see for years.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..........." -- John Donne

no one is safe

[tsf-1962 · 10/10 · 26 December 2006]

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 depicts the fatal passivity of people who think they're safe, that monstrous social upheavals won't touch them. Slowly but surely the Jews of Italy have their freedom taken away from them; before they know what's happening they're headed for Auschwitz. The movie leaves the fate of the Finzi-Continis unresolved, but we know from the novel by Giorgio Bassani that none of them survived. This film is beautifully photographed with the visual opulence one has come to expect from Italian cinema, with a haunting score and memorable performances, especially by the ravishing Dominique Sanda, quite possibly the most beautiful woman to ever appear on film. This is a movie everyone should see, since it drives home only too clearly the lesson that freedom can never be taken for granted, that what happened in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy could happen here too. No one is safe.