The Garden of Finzi-Contini (film)
the Garden of Finzi-Contini ( It Giardino dei Finzi-Contini ) is an Italian film carried out in 1970 by Vittorio de Sica, based on a homonymous novel of Giorgio Bassani with Dominique Sanda in the role of Micol Finzi Contini, Helmut Berger, Fabio Testi, Romolo Valli… the film follows closely the screen of the book, by telling the relations between young people of the Jewish community in the town of Ferrare, in full rise of Mussolini and of the Italian Fascisme in the Années 1930. The film gained the Ours of gold Festival of Berlin as well as the Oscar of best film in foreign language in 1971.
At the beginning of the Garden , the Jewish youth of Ferrare which was seen prohibiting the access to the courses of tennis, invests the palate and the tennis court of Finzi Contini. Those always lived with the variation, cut off behind their walls. Their children followed the courses of particular professors, but Micôl, their daughter, met the narrator during the examinations, and with the synagog… Perfect hostess, very beautiful young girl, it accommodates all her friends.
The visits in the residence of Finzi-Contini will make it possible to the narrator to acknowledge his love with Micôl, which will refuse it… It is torn, and yet, she seems to like it. But it remains so enigmatic.
In backdrop of this opposed love, the life proceeds, the brother of Micôl dies. Micôl ties a strange intrigue with Malnate, one their friends, not-Jew. The fascistic mode multiplies vexatious measurements against the Italian Jews, the pressure increases. But the family Finzi-Contini, pillar of the aristocracy of Ferrare since generations, refuses to accept the imminence of the threat, however that, out of the walls, the worst prepares…
And then it is the arrest, the gathering in the buildings of the school of Ferrare, and the end, foreseeable; there will remain nothing Finzi Contini. Their property, to the abandonment, will turn over to brutality…
This universe of Finzi-Contini which wavers then breaks down under our eyes will not reappear after the Second world war.
It is rather about a summary of film and not of the book.
The question of the arrest is not tackled in the book elsewhere than in preamble. Nothing says in the book that the father of Giorgio is off-set as one sees it in film.
The beginning of the book tells the existence of Micôl and Giorgio before the games of tennis in the garden. These events are taken again only in flashback in film.
Sources
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065777/awards