Over the last five decades, Vittorio Taviani (b. 1929) and his brother Paolo (b. 1931) have created films that explore but challenge their native Italy. The brothers have probed political commitments, class relations, emigration, family and fate in prize-winning features whose subjects range from 18th century aristocrats to their restaging of Shakespeare in a contemporary maximum-security prison, Caesar Must Die. Their carefully-reconstructed scenarios have included the harsh poverty of Sardinia, war-torn landscapes of Tuscany and the new world of Los Angeles; they have drawn on sources as diverse as Pirandello, Tolstoy, Goethe, Shakespeare and autobiographical memories. Thus, they have created a cinematic universe that enriches perspectives established by diverse masters of Italian cinema like De Sica, Fellini, Visconti, and Antonioni, yet with their own, very different vision.Initially attracted to journalism, the brothers were drawn into film by documentarian Joris Ivens with the 1960 production L’Italia non è un paese povero (Italy is not a Poor Country). Two early films here, St. Michael Had a Rooster (1972) and Allonsanfan (1974), chart these social themes as they explore mirroring historical images of radical politics and human commitment.
Padre, Padrone brought the Tavianis international renown. It presents the near surreal harshness of a boy forced by his father into the isolated life of a shepherd. An epilogue by the actual shepherd turned linguist reminds us that reality and stories are never so far apart for the Tavianis, whether in reconstructions of Napoleonic Italy or fables of World War II. Indeed, realism includes the fantastic, as in Good Morning, Babylon, where two earlier Italian brothers, immigrants in America, enter the heady universe of D.W. Griffith’s 1916 epic, Intolerance as well as World War I.
The Tavianis also imbue their films with literature. The enigmatic Luigi Pirandello is a favorite source, represented in two works in this program, Kaos and You Laugh. Yet, the brothers have also reframed foreign classics as insightful commentaries on Italian life, whether Shakespeare, Tolstoy (Night Sun) or Goethe, whose chemical theories provide notions of love to The Elective Affinities.
Over time, the Tavianis themselves have come to embody Italian history and time themselves, from postwar Italy on the verge of global boom while torn by class and region, to a nation looking for identity and purpose in the past to contemporary Italy imprisoned by power and corruption. In this program, 40 years of films allow spectators to share this dialogue through unforgettable images, sounds and characters.
Programme
St. Michael Had a Rooster (San Michele aveva un gallo)
AllonsanfanPadre PadroneThe Night of San Lorenzo (La notte di San Lorenzo)KaosGood Morning, BabylonNight Sun (Il sole anche di notte)
FiorileElective Affinities (Le affinita’ elettive)You Laugh (Tu ridi)