The Best of Youth Part 1

The first of Giordana’s very fine, two-part drama may have been made by RAI television, but as its enormous success in Italy proves, it works perfectly well on the big screen. In charting the fortunes of a Turin family from the mid-’60s to the present, it’s an honourable contribution to a tradition that includes ‘Rocco and His Brothers’ and ‘The Godfather’; but what gives this dynastic soap substance is that its political dimensions are delineated with such care and clarity. The richness of the characters, coupled with the sure sense of time and place in Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli’s complex but lucid script, result in classical storytelling of the highest order.