The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Elegant and elegiac, a movie about death and the passing of time. A true triumph that avoids sentimentality but still manages to trascend the medium.

An underappreciated De Sica film that chillingly depicts the stark, brutal reality of the Holocaust for an upper-class Jewish Italian family.

Sad, haunting film boosted Sanda to stardom and won an Oscar as Best Foreign Film.

A little wooden at times - particularly early on - but tasteful and elegant in its focus on familial relationships, romance & memory, and social exclusion. A marvellous sense of impermanence and realism.

The main themes are all obvious from the beginning, and don't get explored during the course of the film to any satisfaction. Instead we have a predictably melodramatic love story, awful music and too much makeup. The cinematography is nice, although De Sica does nothing very interesting with it. There's just nothing to the story, and no emotional weight or investment in the characters. It was hard to sit through because it's so incredibly dull and banal.

worth a watch

A lushly made film, but the acting really shitted me, it's very subdued and lulling and as unexciting as you can get, making this a fairly uncompelling portrayal of a very compelling situation. The opening credits are very nifty and I like the ending, but everything in between is difficult to enjoy.

It's a great movie but not because it's an elegy for Jews and etc etc. It's great because it questions the inner mechanisms of ostracization within the Jewish community. The Finzi Continis are as evil as the fascists -especially Micol-, because they owe their existence not only to their difference and superiority against proletariat but also against other Jews. The real fasicsm is exerted on Giorgio through his desires about that garden which he can never possess.

(Viewed on 17/01/11): A sensitive, if overly mannered, exploration of the Jewish experience during the fascist occupation of Italy, T.G.O.F.C deals with a Jewish family who are insulated by their privilege and therefore remain oblivious to the encroaching danger gathering momentum outside of their idyllic abode. As a tragic story of paradise lost, relayed through the melancholy medium of memory, it's affecting, but the overall effect is let down by distracting dubbing and pointless zooms.

Beautiful and tragic (in the classic sense of "tragic")

87.50

8-

De Sica attempts to pull the rug from under you with the ending. Sadly there's so little invested in the plot and characters before it happens that it doesn't work on any level.

Bit flat characterwise, which somewhat undermines it, but still works the deadly irony well. The intricate interplay of class, wealth and gender matters not one tiny bit when an even stronger party just brands them all with "JEW".