Based on Giorgio Bassani’s autobiographical 1962 novel of the same name, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis tells the story of an affluent Jewish family living in Ferrara at the time of the rise of fascism. A tennis court built on their manor grounds becomes a private haven for the children of the family and their friends, all shunned by the rest of the townsfolk. The family’s daughter Micòl (Dominique Sanda) and Giorgio, the son of a Jewish businessman, become romantically involved, but the approaching war hinders their progress and by 1943 the whole family faces threat of elimination.
Vittorio De Sica’s early career was littered with masterpieces of neorealist cinema, and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is the crown jewel of his later period. It is a crisp, melancholic and straightforward elegy, which earned both the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film as well as the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. The double exposure of a political landscape and murky sexual ambivalence mastered so skilfully by Italian cinema (cf. Luchino Visconti’s Sandra (1965) and its ”garden of incest”) receives a rueful treatment through De Sica’s lens, highlighting the inordinate karma of disenchantment and cruel quirks of fate. The walls separating the garden from the outside world also act as a metaphor for the line between self-control and inner turmoil, the civilized world and barbarism.
Lauri Timonen