Rent The Garden of the Finzi Contini (1970)

Hard Times in pre war Italy. - The Garden of the Finzi Contini review by Cato

A moving story of unrequited love, in which two rich Jewish families find themselves on the brink of very hard times in Mussolini's Italy. A rather beautiful film in which love seems fated from the very beginning. I watched it twice.

Tennis in a Time of Denial - The Garden of the Finzi Contini review by griggs

This one feels like drifting into a dream just as history turns into a nightmare. You spend a lot of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis on that tennis court and inside those walls, watching a wealthy Jewish family treat fascism like bad weather that will surely pass. Spoiler: it doesn’t

De Sica shoots it with a calm, deceptive beauty – soft light, unshowy tracking shots, and a gentle, melancholy score. The elegance feels quietly wrong-footing as the racial laws tighten mostly off-screen. You see how easy it is to keep playing games, literal and emotional, while the world quietly closes in.

I’m not sure the characters ever quite step out from behind the glass; they’re fascinating, but a bit like museum pieces. Still, as a study of people fiddling with their love lives while the world closes in, it lingers. A beautiful film about the danger of assuming the worst can’t happen here.

Lush cinematography in a tale of doomed aristocratic Jewish family - The Garden of the Finzi Contini review by JO

Beautifully shot drama with a dreamy, ethereal quality depicting the insular world in which the aristocratic Finzi Cortinis lived while the world outside their paradisal garden became engulfed in Fascism. The film focuses on two Jewish families in Ferrara, Italy during the years 1938-43: one is affluent and aristocratic, the other of more humble origins.

Although the handsome Giorgio loves Micol, a Finzi Cortini, his love is unrequited due to the social class divide. When racial laws are instigated, Giorgio's family and most Jews lose their rights; however, the Finzi Cortinis ignore the political situation, figuring that they are secure because of their wealth and social prominence. De Sica makes the point that the Finzi Cortinis, like all land owning Italian Jews of the time, defined themselves more by social rank than by their religion. But in the end, all Jews (Giorgio's and Micol's family) were doomed.

Film is deliberately slow paced and the early scenes of the Finzi Cortinis garden party are ravishing in dreamy soft focus photography. The romantic early scenes are starkly contrasted by the deportation scenes towards the film's ending. Deservedly winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film for that year.