The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.