La notte di San Lorenzo

There are many ways to portrait war, and the Tavianis choose a very circuitous one: By showing it through the eyes of a group of refugees - who, naturally, try to stay away from the fights as much as possible. Many of those refugees are real characters, with little stories of their own, so it's less a film about the actual WW2, but rather about how people react to war as a whole, how it can bring out the best (or worst) in a man and how it upsets everything you took for granted.

One of the nicest things about "La notte di San Lorenzo" is how there's always something lovely or funny to be found - comic or beautiful situations under the direst of circumstances, even if the laughter dies in your throat a few seconds later when violence cruelly rises again. This film celebrates life and humanity itself!

"La notte di San Lorenzo" is from the heydays of the Taviani brothers (the first half of the 80s) but is in my eyes one of their weaker films from this period.

It is situated near the end of the Second World War. The Germans are desperate and a cornered cat makes weird jumps. The inhabitants of a small Italian village decide not to wait for these weird jumps and travel in the direction where they believe the American liberators are.

The journey becomes sort of an odyssey. Old stories are told and hidden secrets are revealed. I was especially touched by the story of the old widow and widower obliged to share a room and confessing their mutual love sixty years after the fact. Gabriel Carcia Marquez could have written it.

The story is told as a bedstory from a mother to her child. When the film ends the child turns out te have been sleeping from the very beginning. So the mother has in fact told the story to herself .... or to us.

This film is an eye-opening look at Italian life during WWII. It reminds me of the stories my grandfather tells me of his life in 1930s Florence during the war, "We didn't have money for anything, not even water. The rich had it all." This movie shows us the sparseness of their lives, and the things that they still hold dear. There are scenes in which it is almost hard to watch, we are torn apart by the brutality of the war, but we are entranced by the people who are living through it. We meet ruthless fascists, and caring catholic priests and every moment describes to us the terrifying truth, and the hope that lets one continue. I could not imagine a more realistic, and emotional epic on the subject.

In the World War II, part of the citizens of the Italian Tuscan town of San Martino decide to leave their homes in the night of San Lorenzo, escaping from the Germans, and searching for the Americans. In the way, they fight against the Fascists, and most of them survive. The story is told by the character Cecilia, an unpleasant six years old girl at that time. Yesterday I watched this famous movie for the first time. I do not know whether was the high expectation I had, but I find it too personal and disappointing. The amateurish cast has not passed emotion to me. The story is very simple and too personal and has not engaged me. I would not like to be unfair, but I have not seen anything special in this small budget realistic movie. I usually do not read any comment of a film before writing mine, but I read the review of Howard Schumann (Vancouver, B.C) and I found it excellent. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): `A Noite de São Lourenço' (`The Night of San Lorenzo')

The fraternal filmmaking team of Paolo and Vittorio Taviani recall the closing days of World War II with mingled affection and pain, looking back at the fate of one small northern Italian village (ostensibly their own childhood home) set in the path of opposing armies. Combining their typically lyrical approach to storytelling with a remarkable feel for setting, the two directors follow a small group of villagers as they steal through enemy lines one night in an attempt to meet the advancing Allied troops. Seen through the rose-colored lens of memory, the Taviani brothers' episodic reminiscences take the horror (but not the hurt) out of battle, reducing all the bloodshed and rage to a poignant and distinctly recalled tragedy.