Ettore Scola had made two amazing tribute to the world of films and cinema in the classics "We All Loved Each Other So Much" and "Splendor", with both dealing
with the power of movies and the nostalgic effects some films have on us through time. This short film goes a step further than that by presenting a notion that I firmly
believe but hadn't seen in similar films either made by him or other directors: Scola proves that movies can save our lives. That's important and very deep, and I guess
some of us can attest to the fact, though not necessarily in the way he presents his story.
During World War II, when the Nazi/Fascist forces are gathering up their prisoners to send to concentration camps, a boy escapes from the soldiers and hides
himself in a dark building. It's a theatre where he seats down terrified thinking the soldier who was following him might come at any moment. Looking at the screen there's
a newsreel about the war which moves to Hitler making a speech which then changes to Chaplin making a spoof of him in "The Great Dictator". What follows are just a close-up
shot of the screen showing the evolution of films through time with many classics of the Italian cinema, from Rossellini and Fellini to Francesco Rosi's final film "La Tregua",
and Scola even includes his own "Una Giornatta Particolare". One can deduce that a life was saved thanks to the power of movies. The boy lived long enough to not only
appreciate this incredible art form but also find a mirror of life since great art reflects the times we live on - there's a reasoning on why most of the film clips
shown deal about the war, the post-war reality shown through the Neo-Realism movement and it ends right with Rosi's film about Primo Levi's experience on a concentration camp. A life was changed once and for all.
It takes some time to finally reach to the cinematic tribute, so most of the time we follow the prisoners being taken out of their building and Scola films in such a way
that for a moment I thought those sequences were taken from an existing movie made by someone else. It's all very sad and somber but when we get to cinema and some colors start to
appear the movie becomes light-hearted, special and unique, and that's when Scola's love, nostalgia and feelings for the movies makes us remind how powerful experiences we had
over the decades, with some masterpieces changing our lives and leaving a mark on us. I had to watch this over and over because it was very special.
Film buffs will definitely get a great kick out of this and will find themselves thinking about the desperate and conflicting times in their lives when a movie made a
difference in their lives and new life perspectives were found simply because the cinema and the movies are powerful tools and powerful forces that stay with us for a long time. It can save lives. 10/10
Note: for odd reasons there are two versions of this short when it comes to showing some film clips. RAI version includes scenes from "Blow Up", "The Night Porter" and
"The Night of the Shooting Stars" which are absent in the better known version, which has other movies of which I don't know the titles. Maybe because of a violent moment or the
nudity from another that the RAI version was changed, I can't tell exactly. Doesn't alter the experience but it was strange to see an alternative version.
