The Night of San Lorenzo (1982)
(La notte di San Lorenzo)
Country: IT
Technical: col 107m
Director: Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
Cast: Omero Antonutti, Margarita Lozano, Claudio Bigagli
Synopsis:
A mother tells her child the tale of a night during the war when villagers fled fearing a Nazi massacre, and brother killed brother in a cornfield.
Review:
As peculiar in tone as their other films Padre Padrone and Kaos, this memorable picture has an epic narrative framing device that sets its traumatic events in context as if it were a fairytale or a bible story (the cornfield sequence features snatches of Verdi and soldiers in Old Testament garb). This impression is underlined by the fragmentary, uncertain nature of the story itself, with the old couple who rediscover their love amidst the slaughter constituting another thread. With this character, a naturalistic shooting style à la Rossellini would be out of place, and we get a resolutely subjective one, callous only in the incomprehensible acts it flatly depicts from a child's vantage point.
(La notte di San Lorenzo)
Country: IT
Technical: col 107m
Director: Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
Cast: Omero Antonutti, Margarita Lozano, Claudio Bigagli
Synopsis:
A mother tells her child the tale of a night during the war when villagers fled fearing a Nazi massacre, and brother killed brother in a cornfield.
Review:
As peculiar in tone as their other films Padre Padrone and Kaos, this memorable picture has an epic narrative framing device that sets its traumatic events in context as if it were a fairytale or a bible story (the cornfield sequence features snatches of Verdi and soldiers in Old Testament garb). This impression is underlined by the fragmentary, uncertain nature of the story itself, with the old couple who rediscover their love amidst the slaughter constituting another thread. With this character, a naturalistic shooting style à la Rossellini would be out of place, and we get a resolutely subjective one, callous only in the incomprehensible acts it flatly depicts from a child's vantage point.
(La notte di San Lorenzo)
Country: IT
Technical: col 107m
Director: Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
Cast: Omero Antonutti, Margarita Lozano, Claudio Bigagli
Synopsis:
A mother tells her child the tale of a night during the war when villagers fled fearing a Nazi massacre, and brother killed brother in a cornfield.
Review:
As peculiar in tone as their other films Padre Padrone and Kaos, this memorable picture has an epic narrative framing device that sets its traumatic events in context as if it were a fairytale or a bible story (the cornfield sequence features snatches of Verdi and soldiers in Old Testament garb). This impression is underlined by the fragmentary, uncertain nature of the story itself, with the old couple who rediscover their love amidst the slaughter constituting another thread. With this character, a naturalistic shooting style à la Rossellini would be out of place, and we get a resolutely subjective one, callous only in the incomprehensible acts it flatly depicts from a child's vantage point.