Jackson Booth-Millard I think I only just remembered that I read about this Italian film in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, because it is an unusual title, but with the high critics rating it was one I definitely looked forward to trying, from director Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D.). Basically set in the late 1930's, in Ferrara, Italy, a group of young friends are banned from playing tennis at regular clubs, so they do so in grand, walled estate owned by the Finzi- Contini, a wealthy, intellectual and sophisticated Jewish family, the two young Finzi-Contini are brother Alberto (Helmut Berger) and sister Micol (Dominique Sanda). We see a series of flashbacks of Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio), middle class Jewish childhood friend to Micol, and how he used to be looking for him having feelings for her, and the two of them got somewhat closer from being friends to him having special attention from her, he tries at one point to make an advance, but she rejects him. Alberto meanwhile has fragile health, and has a close friendship with darkly handsome Bruno Malnate (Fabio Testi), and Giorgio's Father (Romolo Valli) feels the Finzi-Contini don't seem all that Jewish at all, but the family is perhaps overwhelmed by wealth, privilege and generations to be as proud as vulnerable to the realities of what is going on around them. Giorgio, who is definitely in love with Micol is a frequent visitor in the library at the Finzi-Contini's villa, and Micol does seem to show return feeling, but following a visit to Venice and her uncles she rejects all his affection, and continues an affair with Bruno, Giorgio seems them naked together through a window and is heartbroken, so he gets comfort from his father. By 1943 the Germans have invaded the Soviet Union, and all the young Jewish people who hung around the family estate have been arrested, Alberto dies from his sickness, the Finzi-Continis are finally seized by the Nazi army and taken into isolation, packed into a former classroom and separated from each other, the fate for all the many Jewish people of Ferrara in this space is that they will all be sent to concentration camps, the film ends with the final happy images of Micol, Alberto, Giorgio's brother Ernesto (Raffaele Curi) and Bruno playing tennis, with death music playing in the background. Also starring Camillo Angelini-Rota as Micol's Father - Prof. Ermanno Finzi-Contini, Katina Morisani as Micol's Mother and Inna Alexeievna as Micol's Grandmother. I will be honest and say that most of the pleasant material before the last twenty to thirty minutes were fine, the family and friends bonding is good, but for me the most memorable scenes are the horrific sights of the Jewish people you know are doomed to the fate of the holocaust, but throughout there is great music, good colourful and later faded imagery and all in all a good feeling humanity tested, it is an interesting Second World War drama. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it was nominated for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, and it won the BAFTA for the UN Award, and it was nominated for Best Cinematography. Very good!

Dave Smithee No doubt this film is prettily photographed. And everyone in it is very pretty too, with their gleaming tennis whites and Sunday best dresses. For most of the movie we observe the characters dreamily cycling into one scene in a bit of this "garden" (in reality an amorphous amalgam of four private estates) and languorously cycling out, quite untroubled by bellicose drum rolls sounding off in other bits of Europe just to the north. As for clearly identifying the chief protagonists and following their fortunes, the poor viewer has a hard time trying to tell these lovely people apart one from the other. In fact, for me the only true moments of any dramatic force in the film occurs in the last scene in the dark toned schoolroom, leagues away from the dazzling sun. Out of the whole film, it is only here that tense emotions truly grip the audience with any convincing force. But this is too little, too late. De Sica has wasted too much filmic time presenting us with bloodless ciphers in his candy floss world for us to give a tinker's cuss for these folks and their final dire outcome.

tsf-1962 In its own quiet way this Vittorio de Sica gem is as gripping and powerful as such more graphic Holocaust films as "Schindler's List" and "Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom." It deals with a wealthy Italian Jewish family living in a secluded estate in the city of Ferrara. The Finzi-Continis are almost completely assimilated and have little in common with their fellow Jews, but once Mussolini's racial laws begin to take effect they open their gardens to young Jews from the neighborhood. The movie depicts the fatal passivity of people who think they're safe, that monstrous social upheavals won't touch them. Slowly but surely the Jews of Italy have their freedom taken away from them; before they know what's happening they're headed for Auschwitz. The movie leaves the fate of the Finzi-Continis unresolved, but we know from the novel by Giorgio Bassani that none of them survived. This film is beautifully photographed with the visual opulence one has come to expect from Italian cinema, with a haunting score and memorable performances, especially by the ravishing Dominique Sanda, quite possibly the most beautiful woman to ever appear on film. This is a movie everyone should see, since it drives home only too clearly the lesson that freedom can never be taken for granted, that what happened in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy could happen here too. No one is safe.

Lee Eisenberg The Italian people probably felt a moral degradation knowing that their government had participated in exterminating Jews during WWII. "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" was probably their way of showing that they were atoning for it. It tells of the Jewish Finzi-Contini family in Ferrara in the 1930s. They are a very well off family (with a false sense of security), and many of the people within the family are falling for each other. Unfortunately for them, not even their social status can protect them from the doom that awaits them.Much like in "The Bicycle Thief" over 20 years earlier, Vittorio De Sica shows the desperate existences of a few people, surrounded by what many incorrectly assumed to be a joyful world. Wonderful.