The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971)

Synopsis: Vittorio De Sica's beautifully photographed masterpiece, THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, is a return to the fine dramas (SHOESHINE, THE BICYCLE THIEF) of his early days as a director. Based on the autobiographical novel by Giorgio... Vittorio De Sica's beautifully photographed masterpiece, THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, is a return to the fine dramas (SHOESHINE, THE BICYCLE THIEF) of his early days as a director. Based on the autobiographical novel by Giorgio Bassani, the film covers the lives of several Jewish characters from the onset of Mussolini's anti-Semitic edicts in 1938 to the arrest and deportation of all of the Italian Jews in 1943. The lead character, Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio), is a middle-class student invited by the fabulously wealthy Finzi-Continis to research his thesis in the family's private library. While pursuing his studies, Giorgio falls in love with the family's beautiful daughter, Micol (Dominique Sanda), who rebuffs his advances. Meanwhile, Mussolini is slowly dissolving the rights of all Italian Jews, though the Finzi-Contini family appears unable to accept this fact, let alone deal with its consequences. Viewed from the perfect vision of hindsight, the GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS is more than just a story of unrequited love set in turbulent times--it is a tragic, cautionary account of how the most elevated and aristocratic members of a society can ignore their approaching destruction. [More]

Starring: Dominique Sanda, Lino Capolicchio, Helmut Berger, Fabio Testi

Starring: Dominique Sanda, Lino Capolicchio, Helmut Berger, Fabio Testi, Romolo Valli, Raffaele Curi, Camillo Angelini-Rota, Katina Viglietti, Inna Alexeieff

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Director: Vittorio De Sica
Producer: Arthur Cohn, Gianni Hecht Lucari, Fausto Saraceni
Screenwriter: Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio Bonicelli, Ugo Pirro
Story: Giorgio Bassani
Composer: Manuel De Sica

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