Ferrare, Italy, 1938. The vast Finzi-Continis domain opens its doors to the middle-class youth when sports clubs access is suddenly denied to Jews. The rich Jewish noble family welcomes here their children’s friends. In this closed preserved space, Giorgio and Micol, only daughter of the family, live their lives, which grows from friendship to love for Giorgio.
As Italy is going deeper into fascism and Europe is on the edge of war, the Finzi-Continis are shown as living in a protected closed world, keepers of an art of living on the way of its destruction. The story runs through four years that will cover the evolutions of the relationship between Giorgio, the educated middle class boy, and Micol, when, all around them, the mentalities are changing, due to the rise of fascism. Ignored, underestimated, the new order that overcomes Europe will finally break through the domain and definitively destroy it.
Like beautiful Micol (marvellous Dominique Sanda), the family seems desperately passive to face the changes that occurs in Italy, caused by mussolinian racial laws and the rise of the brown shirts. Shot in a stunning way, as the photography evolves in time with the periods, Vittorio de Sica’s film is a wonder like -in a different way- neo-realism classics were (The Bicycle Thieve, Umberto D.). Adapting the novel by Giorgio Bassani, De Sica, through the Finzi-Continis, evokes a certain idea of Europe, its culture and its values, through its aristocracy facing the rise of fascism. “When I show this people so little anxious of the threats upon them, when the father says “Mussolini is better than Hitler”, when the son blames his father’s lack of reaction against persecutions, I think I reflected well theses times”. De Sica’s will is not to tell about Micol’s love affairs but to make her a living image of European aristocracy’s position in fascist Italy and in whole Europe. The Finzi-Continis will be blown away by History, and, with them, a certain idea of European aristocracy which definetly ended with world war two.
The DVD is now available. More information about The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.