The wooden shoe tree
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The wooden shoe tree |
| Original title | L'albero degli zoccoli |
| Country of production | Italy , France |
| original language | Lombard |
| Publishing year | 1978 |
| length | 186 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ermanno Olmi |
| script | Ermanno Olmi |
| production | Italnoleggio, RAI |
| music |
Johann Sebastian Bach Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
| camera | Ermanno Olmi |
| cut | Ermanno Olmi |
| occupation | |
| |
The wooden shoe tree (original title: L'albero degli zoccoli ) is a feature film by the Italian director Ermanno Olmi from 1978 . The director's film with peasant ancestors from Lombardy describes Italian, rural life in the late 19th century and shows parallels to earlier films of Italian neorealism - among other things, Olmi relied on the naturalness of amateur actors and also renounced the artificial lightening of Twilight and night scenes as stylistic devices. Because of the barely understandable dialect, the film had to be subtitled when it opened in theaters in Italy.
action
A farm in the Po Valley , on the threshold of the 20th century: four large farming families live together as tenants on a farm near Bergamo and have to give two thirds of the harvest to their “master”. He also owns the land, the other buildings and most of the cattle. The father of the family Battisti, whose wife is pregnant again, is one of the farmers. The pastor persuades him to send his eldest son Minek to school, which means that the child will largely no longer help out with the daily work. According to the pastor, the father should trust Providence. He also gets extra white bread, the only luxury of his pregnant mother. When Minek breaks his wooden shoe one day on the six-kilometer way to school, his father secretly drops a small poplar tree and carves his son a new shoe.
There are often arguments in the Finard family, as the father is considered very stingy.
In addition to the Battistis and Finards, the widow Runk and her six children and the Brena family also live on the farm. With her earnings as a laundress, the widow can hardly feed her offspring. With the help of the pastor, she therefore plans to put the two youngest children in a home. Her eldest son Peppino is resisting it. He would rather work day and night than break up the family. When the family's cow falls ill and the doctor predicts that the animal will die, the mother gives the animal water to drink that she drew near the chapel. Contrary to expectations, the cow recovered, but was later picked up by the estate manager along with the calf.
The Brena family is preparing for a wedding - their daughter Maddalena marries Stefano. The couple spends their honeymoon with the girl's pious aunt in Milan, who runs an orphanage. They take a river barge to the city, which at the time is rife with demonstrations and unrest by striking workers. They spend their wedding night in two beds pushed together and decorated with a wreath in the monastery hall. One day later, the aunt manages to persuade Maddalena and Stefano to adopt a child.
In the evenings, the four farming families sit together in the barn, sing and tell each other stories. A politician who calls for more social justice during a village festival is hardly noticed by the farmers. When the landlord notices that someone has felled his little poplar, the Battistis have to leave the farm. They leave in the evening hours. The other families first venture out of the house, mute and sad, to watch their departing neighbors, when the Battistis' cart disappears into the darkness. There is no outrage.
Reviews
The film was shown in the Federal Republic of Germany in a German dubbed version and a subtitled original version. Critics repeatedly suggested looking at the latter version.
Edgar Wettstein ( film-dienst ) praised Olmi's directorial work as an extraordinary work, "of rare beauty, sensitivity and patience in the depiction of people and the landscape" . The wooden shoe tree interprets the existence of the poor peasants as “their own religious convictions” , which clearly sets the film apart from the “Marxist-revolutionary interpretation of history” in current Italian filmmaking. Olmi does register poverty and dependence on the landlord, but, according to Wettstein's observation, refrains from “ideological criticism” . There are several ways to experience and understand the film - from the “sensitive chronicle of simple life” to (with the help of “discreet artistic means” ) a liturgy . A comparison with Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 could lead to the misunderstanding that Olmi created “a beautiful, profound film that accepts social injustice as God-given” , but that Olmi sees his work as a filmmaker “very differently” .
Wolfgang Limmer ( Der Spiegel ) remarked that compared to Bertolucci's 1900 , Olmi's film behaved like “the history of opera” . "With ethnographic meticulousness, Olmi reconstructs a historical way of life and work and, in his completely undramatic description of rulership and down-to-earthness, lets the Janus face of progress shine through, but without taking a polemical position." Olmi's characters would accept "their dependency as given by nature and willed by God" , "Without anger or doubt towards their Lord in castle and church" . The “feeling of loss that one feels with every picture of this poignant film” remains “always ambivalent” . Limmer also described the film as "a gentle but relentless correction to the boutique mentality that generally deals with peasant heritage."
Peter Hamm ( Die Zeit ) noticed an “unusual silence” that characterizes the film. This was "of such violence that it [...] would effortlessly triumph over the brutally obscene speculations of most of what is otherwise called cinema today" . The incomprehensible peasant language is a central message that points “to the total isolation of these people from the rest of the historical world” . Hamm quoted critics who had missed the portrayal of sexuality in Olmi's film. However, they overlooked "that for these peasants sexuality only ever occurred under cover of night (was not" practiced ") and that therefore only its sublimation under the sun can be visible" . Hamm also resolutely opposed the accusation of nostalgia and noted a few parallels to the works of Robert Bresson .
According to Roger Ebert ( Chicago Sun-Times ), the film is in the neorealist tradition of Vittorio De Sica's films . The amateur actors would produce "amazing performances" . Observing the daily activities of the farming families is "pleasant, even lulling" and Ebert enjoyed the film "on a documentary level" . It is about “the story of a few lives” , but Olmi has an increasing tendency to portray these lives a little “too sentimentally” . The film should be viewed because of its “visual charms” - Olmi would have produced “an amazing wealth of details, accuracy and beauty” , that would be “enough”.
Although The Wooden Shoe Tree had almost nothing to offer, the film was "probably a masterpiece," noted Vincent Canby ( The New York Times ), alluding to the lack of a main narrative thread and explicit political views, among other things. However, the film offers more political content in every single scene than in all scenes of Bertolucci's “grandiose” 1900 . Olmi's directorial work is similar to Terrence Malick's In the Embers of the South “almost too beautiful for its own good” . The performance of the entire cast was "amazingly good" - the faces would be "admirable without looking pretty" .
According to Reclam's film guide, Olmi would fully engage with the milieu and its people and tell “her story with noticeable sympathy and respect” . He shows understanding "for their inability to break out of their miserable life" . This gives the film "a great moral and artistic power" .
Cinema magazine called the film "an epic praise of the simple life" .
“In patient and sensitive reconstruction with amateur actors, he unfolds the image of a poor existence suffering from the burden of social injustice, which is, however, held in connection with nature and belief. He impresses both with his bitter poetry and his unobtrusive Christian understanding of life. "
Awards
The film won fourteen international film and festival awards. These include the Golden Palm of the Cannes Film Festival , the French César in the category of best foreign language film , the Prix Léon Moussinac of the Association Française de la Critique de Cinéma , the Italian David di Donatello as best film (together with Francesco Rosi's Christ only came up to Eboli and Franco Brusatis forget Venice ) as well as six awards from the Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani (director, camera, story and screenplay as well as production design and costumes), the association of Italian film journalists.
In the United States, Olmi's film won the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for best foreign language film, respectively.
Web links
- The Tree of Wooden Clogs in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The wooden shoe tree. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed May 7, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c Erno Wettstein: The wooden shoe tree. In: film service. 04/1979 (accessed via Munzinger Online )
- ↑ a b Peter Hamm: Authentic miracles . In: The time. March 30, 1979.
- ↑ a b Wolfgang Limmer: Film: Inhuman Lost Paradise . In: Der Spiegel. 14/1979, pp. 201-204.
- ^ Roger Ebert: The Tree of Wooden Clogs . March 12, 1980.
- ↑ Vincent Canby: Film: Olmi's 'The Tree of Wooden Clogs'. In: The New York Times. June 1, 1979.
- ^ Dieter Krusche: Reclam's film guide. Reclam, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-15-010676-1 , pp. 30-31.
- ↑ Cinema magazine
- ↑ a b Awards in the Internet Movie Database (accessed on May 16, 2010)