Bread and Chocolate

Great tale about the "joys" of being an immigrant in 70's Switzerland and being rejected from their society for anything other than for labor.

It's all in the title, no connection to the popular "pane e Stella" Italian snack here, rather the bread is a metaphor for the immigrants who have little choice but working abroad to put bread on their families table, while the chocolate refers to the luxury Swiss product and symbolizes that country's wealth. It's bread and chocolate as in rich and poor, as in eating for survival as opposed to eating for pleasure, as in immigrant and swiss, etc.

Bread and Chocolate is a very humanistic movie that mixes funny with sadness. The way the Brusati shows us the way foreign people are welcome to Switzerland is somehow not the saddest way but in addition it has some humor. This makes the audience, like people said before, cry and laugh at the same time. It can also be based on a real person and not fictitious as people like Nino would do anything to stay in a country where they have opportunities. Excellent job for Brusati, it is the first Brusati film I have seen and I am looking forward to see another one.

I saw this film when it first came out and fell in love with it.

Having spent some time in Switzerland, I knew the truth of the rejection of foreign workers, and I saw the places where they lived in great poverty, in the midst of rich, glittering inter- national crowds. The bigotry was (and still is to a great

extent) painfully true.

This is one of those marvelous films that makes one cry and laugh, almost simultaneously. As many have said before, it is Chaplinesque.

I especially appreciated hearing the various languages actually spoken by the characters - German, Italian, Greek, Turkish. The subtitles help the viewer very well indeed, but the sound of the actual languages enhances the verisimilitude of the story.

Just recently I have, after more than 20 years of searching, discovered that this film is on video tape, and I can't wait to acquire it - at long last!

When this comedy came out in the 70's, it was aptly described as "Chaplinesque". The hero, a coarse Italian immigrant in Switzerland, is as much an Everyman as Chaplin's Tramp. The movie was a hit in the US, winning the NY Critics' Award for Best Foreign Film. Nino Manfredi is funny and touching as the earthy immigrant, the "bread" in the land of refinement ("chocolate"). Anna Karina is stunning as the Greek stowaway who shares some of the same predicament as Manfredi. The "chicken coop" sequence is particularly hilarious. I think this is one movie that deserves to be transformed into a Broadway musical. How about it, Mr. Sondheim?

This movie brilliantly and movingly, but always with a lot of irony, describes the plight of an Italian migrant laborer in Switzerland. Some scenes are among the best in the history of cinema.

A group of migrant laborers are doing some filthy work in a ramshackle barn. Through a small window they see some beautiful young Swiss adolescents riding on horse back. These youngsters look like gods compared to the poor ants in the barn!

In another scene the hero of the film has been trying very hard for some time to assimilate, to become even more Swiss then the Swiss themselves. But he can't suppress his deep feelings of identity for ever. One day he enters a pub and watches a soccer match between Italy and Switzerland. At a certain moment he can't control himself any more and starts shouting to encourage the Italian team. He makes such a nuisance of himself that the Swiss throw him out.

Utterly brilliant!