L'arbre aux sabots

I have a bit of warning for the tender-hearted. This is a realistic portrait of peasant life and as such you'll see a couple animals butchered on-screen. A pig and goose are killed and some might find this pretty disturbing...but it is realistic and is an important part of peasant life.

This film is sort of a more modern Neo-realist sort of film because like the Neo-realist films of the 1940s and early 1950s, it is an Italian film that consists of non-professional actors in natural settings. However, the reason why this was done is quite different. During the time of WWII and post-war Italy, sets and actors were hard to come by and directors (such as De Sica and Rossellini) had no choice but to make these sorts of films. However, in 1978 the film was made this way for entirely different reasons--to heighten the sense of realism as the film was about simple folks and having professionals playing these roles might have detracted from this realism.

The film is set on a farming collective owned by a landlord. Five families work the land and share a large compound broken down into separate apartments and stables. The life is pretty simple and rather grim and the film does a very good job of portraying this life. And this is much of the problem with this film for the average viewer. While history teachers like me might find it all pretty fascinating and like how accurately this is all portrayed, will the average viewer? Probably not. That's because not all that actually happens in the film---and it lasts about three hours. As a result, the film does drag and I even found myself feeling sleepy as I watched. It's exceptionally well crafted but also a bit of a chore to view.

"Tree of Wooden Clogs" is a film that film critics will adore but the average person will probably hate...and many folks will feel guilty because they didn't 'get' the movie and think they should have.

This film really surprises. It is long and detailed, yet, it is amazingly suspenseful. The quiet sturdy look at rural life in Italy manages to accomplish the amazing feet of truly "being" a film of "the oppressed" rather than a mere analysis of "the wretched of the earth". Olmi's direction of the non-professional cast is superb and the film is beautifully shot and edited.

Don't be afraid of this film. It does not actually seem long, nor does it seem aimless or plotless. While one may say that "the whole pesant community" is the real protagonist there are clearly defined characters in the film whose narratives we follow. In fact, the films strategy is one of integration of these narrative strands in a seemingly coherent and logical way. A wonderful, very emotionally moving experience with a clear, sharp, political analysis.

The last time I felt swept and moved by a movie with so much depth was when I saw "Andrei Rublev" and "Eternity and a Day", and this movie is such like them when it fails to become a movie and becomes a modern piece of art.

It was like if someone would've been reading me a poem whilst watching such beautiful landscapes. And all through that, you feel in your own skin the love for their own soil. it seems as if they had been rooted to the grounds.

Certainly it is not for everyone's tastes but it is truly a moving experience.

Axel.

If there were any reason for dropping out of normal life and dedicating oneself entirely to watching Italian films, this might be it! The majestic simplicity and dignity of this film make even the best contemporary films seem trivial and stillborn by comparison. Loved by sensitive audiences and critics alike, Ermanno Olmi's movie describes incidents in the lives of four families sharecropping in Lombardy at the coming of the twentieth century. Olmi's extraordinary command of imagery, movement, rhythm, and lighting conveys a potent nostalgia for Earth and the family of man. There is a scene in which images of a father carving clogs for his shoeless boy are intercut with the lives of the farm families. The music accompanying that scene is a Bach organ chorale. The effect is almost sacramental and entirely overwhelming and may be one of my favorite scenes in all cinema. That scene alone is worth more than all the digitalized special effects, car crashes, ocean liner sinkings, and the deafening Dolby vapidity of so much of the inane junk embraced undiscriminatingly by so many. If they only had the eyes to see, ears to hear, and the soul to love this wondrous work of art.

The most authentic version on this film has the original Bergamasco dialect track. The newer DVDs from Italy have the option of choosing this soundtrack.

I had seen Wooden Clogs about twenty years ago but could remember very little about the film other than it was about very poor Italian peasant farmers at the turn of the century and that 'wooden clogs' somehow figured into the film's plot.

It is one of those films that is seemingly about nothing, but could be about everything. i didn't find its 3 hour length to be a problem. It is almost like watching a documentary about peasant life right down to its hand held camera techniques. It is subtle though. Not the shaky-cam or vomit-cam stuff you see today.

The cast is entirely made up of non-actors. Real peasants. And apparently it was shot using its local dialect, Bergamasque which then had to be dubbed into Italian for the Italian market. Olmi explains in the DVD extras that all of the non-actors did their own dubbing which I have to say is quite a technical accomplishment for amateurs.

The film opens with a farmer chopping the head off of a goose. A little later on the controversial scene depicting the slaughter and butchering of a hog is played out in almost real time. It is very graphic and quite disturbing. But just when I thought you would never want your kids to see this, Olmi cuts to two three year-old peasant kids watching the hog die with unbothered fascination. This is real life on a real farm.

And you can tell that it is done by a proficient butcher and is not a gratuitous add-on for exploitation. It is just something that Olmi has selected to include in the film.

I'd suggest this one for a change of pace.