Simply Perfect

Overrated

A lot of fun.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

A stunner. Vittorio De Sica's late career masterpiece exposes the hopeless plight a lot of Italian Jews faced as the lunatic Mussolini got further and further into bed with Hitler during WWII. The Finzi-Continis, a well-to-do family of intellectuals fail to realize the rising tide of anti-semitism around them as their vast estate becomes more and more a sanctuary for their equally blind friends. Unrequited love and missed chances at romance are dwarfed in importance as the Nazis move in. This is a very unsettling movie as you're well aware of what is going to happen to these people. De Sica (and five or six uncredited scriptwriters) creates a real sense of dread and the film is populated with an excellent cast. Lino Capolicchio is the standout, hopelessly in love with Finzi-Contini débutante Dominique Sanda. As Sanda's infirm brother, Helmut Berger personifies an entire race of people about to be systematically eliminated. Fabio Testi and Romolo Valli (excellent as Capolicchio's grotesquely optimistic father) are in it too.

This is a parable (& a wake-up call) to all those who feel sufficiently insulated from global pressures so that they feel immune to the effects to which most other people are subject. The Finzi-Continis are an aristocratic, wealthy, "connected" Jewish family in Italy in the 1930s-40s. Mussolini's Fascist party followed the lead of Germany's Hitler/Nazis' anti-Semitism and purging of Jews, at first slowly following suit (denying Jews library use was among the earlier, then denying university graduation for Jews, then forbidding marriage between Jews and non-Jews, then denying any possibility of non-Jews working for Jews), etc., etc. They increasingly tightened their anti-Semitic noose.The social position of the Finzi-Continis and their walled garden seemed (at first) to keep these gathering restrictions at bay and inconsequential. E.g., when (early on) Jews were prohibited from using public tennis courts, young Jews flocked to the estate garden of the aristocratic Finzi-Continis, which had tennis courts. At first, they have little concern with the gradually tightening restrictions, the increasing anti-Semitism, and no sense there's a growing tsunami.But restrictions kept tightening much further.I saw the movie at a retired university faculty film series presenting great films. There were a number of hankies daubing eyes at the conclusion.I had problems keeping some of the film's 20-ish male characters distinct from each other (maybe those fluent in Italian wouldn't have that problem) as well as in some of the flashbacks to earlier times. Also the English subtitles sometimes quit the screen before I'd completely read them.BUT, all in all, this is a VERY important, consequential film that I've wanted to see for years."No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..........." -- John Donne

I first heard a radio adaptation from the Garden of the Finzi Contini and afer that read the book. I thought it would be difficult to make an adaptation to cinema. Indeed, the book is above all psychological (or romantic in the literary meaning of the 19th century)i.e the narrator describing his inner world and his sufferings...However, Vittorio de Sica succeeded in expressing this without using monologue, without making a too slow picture... The music is very good too... the images are wonderful...I must correct some commentaries Malnate, Micol's lover is not a fascist but a communist... There is also a difference with the book : in the book we do not know for sure that Micol and Malnate were lovers, it is an assumption whereas it is an evidence in the film...In spite of this differences, this picture deserves a 10 out of 10!

The Italian people probably felt a moral degradation knowing that their government had participated in exterminating Jews during WWII. "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" was probably their way of showing that they were atoning for it. It tells of the Jewish Finzi-Contini family in Ferrara in the 1930s. They are a very well off family (with a false sense of security), and many of the people within the family are falling for each other. Unfortunately for them, not even their social status can protect them from the doom that awaits them.Much like in "The Bicycle Thief" over 20 years earlier, Vittorio De Sica shows the desperate existences of a few people, surrounded by what many incorrectly assumed to be a joyful world. Wonderful.