The Tree of Wooden Clogs [L’Albero Degli Zoccoli] ***** (1978, Luigi Ornaghi, Francesca Moriggi, Omar Brignoli) – Classic Movie Review 6156

‘We invite you to visit a time and place when life was still a sacred matter.’ Italian movie master Ermanno Olmi writes, photographs, edits and directs this rigorous, realistic and majestic 1978 historical film drama panorama of four peasant farming families on one absentee landowner’s estate in Lombardy, Italy, during a year towards the close of the 19th century.

This neo-realist masterpiece is evidently a clear labour of love by Olmi. The vast running time length of 186 minutes allows for a luxuriously leisurely, stately pace and intricate documentary-style observation. And this grand people-oriented movie is full of intimate revelations and universal truths in a film that reaches the parts other art movies do not even dream of.

The convincing actors are all non-professionals from Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy.

It was a deserved Palme D’Or (best film) winner at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978, and it won the 1979 César award for Best Foreign Film and the Flaherty Documentary Award at the 1980 BAFTA Awards (even though it is a historical film drama).

It stars Luigi Ornaghi, Francesca Moriggi, Omar Brignoli, Antonio Ferrari, Teresa Brescianini, Giuseppe Brignoli, Carlo Rota and Massimo Fratus.

It is shot in Gevacolor by Ermanno Olmi and Carlo Petriocioli, produced by Giulio Mandelli and designed by Enrico Tovaglieri, with Set Decoration by Franco Gambarana, Costume Design by Francesca Zucchelli, and with music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Fernando Germani.

Ermanno Olmi (1931–2018).

Ermanno Olmi was born on 24 July 1931 in Treviglio, Lombardy, Italy, and died on 7 May 2018 in Asiago, Veneto, Italy, aged 86. He was also known for Il Posto (1961) and The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6156

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