Paolo e Vittorio Taviani-La Notte di San Lorenzo (1982)

Posted By: FNB47

Date: April 9, 2007

Paolo e Vittorio Taviani-La Notte di San Lorenzo (1982)
| 1432.4 MB | Runtime 1:47:05 | color |
Language : Italian
Optional subtitles : French / English / Spanish
Audio : AC3, 48000 Hz, 192 Kb/s, 2-ch
Video : XviD, 1630 Kb/s, 23.97 frm/s, 656x400 (1.66:1)

From internationally celebrated directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (Padre Padrone) comes this extraordinary film about a Tuscan village struggling against Nazi persecution during the last moments of WWII. With its stirring beautiful story Night of the Shooting Stars is a celebration of humanity and majestic entertainment. Six-year-old Cecilia is fascinated by the world and everything in it. And when her family and neighbors flee their village to escape the Nazis, it's the most exciting moment of her life! But the excitement turns to terror when the enemy begins to close in. Little Cecilia prays for rescue, on this, the Night of the Shooting Stars- an evening during which, it is said, all wishes are granted. Can Cecilia's wish be granted… or will this be her eternal night? (-DVD cover)

The Night of San Lorenzo, the night of the shooting stars, is the night when dreams come true in Italian folklore. In 1944, a group of Italians flee their town after hearing rumours that the Nazis plan to blow it up and that the Americans are about to arrive to liberate them. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0084422/plotsummary)

With its subtle mixture of wartime hardship, comedic interludes, and a hallucinatory hint of Italian magic realism, The Night of the Shooting Stars was named the best film of 1982 by the prestigious National Society of Film Critics. Drawing inspiration from their own experiences in Nazi-occupied Italy, the codirecting Taviani brothers (Paolo and Vittorio) remade this feature from their 1954 debut short "San Miniato, July 1944," framing its touching yet occasionally vague tale of wartime survival as a bedtime story, told by a loving mother from her memories as a 6-year-old, fleeing her Tuscan village in the closing days of World War II. American liberation is promised within days, but the Nazis have rigged village houses with mines, so the residents of San Martino flee to the countryside, where encounters with fascists are common and deadly. (amazon.com/Editorial Reviews)

*The Night of the Shooting Stars*, written and directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, is a semi-autobiographical account of World War II shuddering to a close in the Tuscan countryside. The movie begins with the disembodied voice of a young woman, who proceeds to relate her childhood memories of war to her own child. We hear this as the camera stays glued on a static shot of an open window looking out into the dreamy blue evening. A typically fairy-tale-like Italian village is visible. This sets the stage for the impressionistic narrative that follows. Everything seems exaggerated in this movie, which is to be expected when the incidents are viewed primarily (though not exclusively) through the eyes of an impressionable six-year-old girl. (amazon.com)

The plot is simple: "San Martino (based on the real town of San Miniato between Pisa and Florence) is earmarked for destruction by the Germans. The villagers must decide whether to stay or leave. Rumors abound that the Americans are in the vicinity – will they reach San Martino first? Or should the villagers hit the dusty roads in the countryside and find the Americans before their town is destroyed? About half stay, and half go: we follow the half that goes. There are dozens of characters who embark on the journey, so not much time can be expended on characterization. But the Tavianis cast actors of such unique physiognomy that we feel we know them at a glance. Quite often, they're presented as heroic archetypes. (amazon.com)

The camera seems to glow around the young couple freshly married with a child on the way; it closes in on the village priest so that we can see every pore of guilty conscience in his face. Larger-than-life gestures help carry the characterization along. But it's the set-pieces that astonish with their comic and/or dramatic intensity and their hyper-realism. There's a marvelous bit when the girl, watching a small-scale battle that has erupted around her, associates the combatants with the heroes from Homer that her grandfather used to tell tales about. (amazon.com)

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