The films reviewed here represent those I have liked or loved over the years. It is not a list of my favourite films but all the films reviewed here are worth seeing and worth seeking out. I know many of you won't agree with me on a lot of these but hopefully you will grant me, and the films that appear here, our place in the sun. Thanks for reading.
Sunday, 21 August 2022
I FIDANZATI
Giovanni is an engineer who leaves his fiancee in the North of Italy for promotion in Sicily but once there finds it very different from what he expected. Like "Il Posto" before it, Ermanno Olmi's masterpiece "I Fidanzati" uses mostly non-professional actors and a documentary-style approach to chronicle the everyday life of ordinary people in, for Giovanni at least, an alien environment. Sicily may as well be the surface of the moon though it does have its own rarefied atmosphere.
Olmi's genius has always been for focusing his gaze on the simple things of life. There are no great dramas going on; some may even find "I Fidanzati" boring and yet there is more truthfulness and beauty here than most films can only dream of. I could watch Giovanni drift through his less than exciting life until the cows come home and Carlo Cabrini's 'non-performance' as Giovanni is quietly magnificent, perfectly in keeping with Olmi's vision of the man. Not as highly thought of as "Il Posto" but just as fine, "I Fidanzati" is one of the greatest of Italian films and, sadly, one of the most underrated.
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