Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Bookmark this pageThe Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970)
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
De Sica's most watchable film in years of crude farces and coarse melodramas. Based on the novel by Giorgio Bassani and set in Ferrera in 1938, it deals with the net of persecution that gradually closes in on Italian Jews as Mussolini models his state ever more closely on Hitler's Germany. External events hold the film in a vice-like grip, while its dreamy evocation of a doomed way of life ambivalently records the placidity with which the aristocratically wealthy Finzi-Continis - retreating within their walled estate when they are no longer welcome outside - simply wait for fate to overtake them. Formally beautiful, sometimes moving, it's ultimately rather hollow.Author: TM
Cast & crew
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Producer: Gianni Hecht Lucari, Arthur Cohn
Cast: Dominique Sanda, Lino Capolicchio, Helmut Berger, Romolo Valli, Fabio Testi, Camillo Cesarei, Inna Alexeief full cast
Duration: 95 mins
Top Stories
Ben Drew aka Plan B interview
The singer, rapper and now film director discusses his debut film 'Ill Manors'
Cannes Film Festival 2012: final round-up
Dave Calhoun draws the curtain on the world's greatest film festival
Ridley Scott interview
Director Ridley Scott tells Cath Clarke why he's making a science fiction comeback
What do you think?
Post your review now