''Padre Padrone'' is a 1977
Italian film directed by
Paolo Taviani
Paolo Taviani (; born 8 November 1931) and Vittorio Taviani (; 20 September 1929 – 15 April 2018), collectively referred to as the Taviani brothers, were Italian film directors and screenwriters who collaborated on film productions.
At the C ...
and
Vittorio Taviani
Paolo Taviani (; born 8 November 1931) and Vittorio Taviani (; 20 September 1929 – 15 April 2018), collectively referred to as the Taviani brothers, were Italian film directors and screenwriters who collaborated on film productions.
At the C ...
. The Tavianis used both professional and non-professional actors from the Sardinian countryside. The title () literally means "Father Master"; it has been translated as ''My Father, My Master'' or ''Father and Master''.
The drama was originally filmed by the Taviani brothers for Italian television but won the 1977 ''
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...
'' prize at the
1977 Cannes Film Festival
The 30th Cannes Film Festival was held from 13 to 27 May 1977. The Palme d'Or went to the ''Padre Padrone'' by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. A new non-competitive section, "Le Passé composé", is held at this festival only and focuses on compilatio ...
.
The film depicts a
Sardinia
Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label=Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after ...
n
shepherd who is terrorized by his domineering father and tries to escape by educating himself. He eventually becomes a celebrated linguist. The drama is based on an autobiographical book of the same title by
Gavino Ledda
Gavino Ledda (; born 30 December 1938) is an author and a scholar of the Italian language and of Sardinian. He is best known for his autobiographical work ''Padre Padrone'' (1975).
Biography
Early life
Ledda was born in Siligo, in the Province ...
.
Plot
The film opens in documentary style at the elementary school in
Siligo
Siligo is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the region of Logudoro - Meilogu in the Province of Sassari in the Italian region Sardinia, located about north of Cagliari and about southeast of Sassari.
Siligo borders the following municipalities: ...
that six-year-old Gavino (Saverio Marconi) is attending. His tyrannical peasant father (
Omero Antonutti
Omero Antonutti (3 August 1935 – 5 November 2019) was an Italian actor and voice actor.
Biography
Born in Basiliano, in the province of Udine (in the Northeastern Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia), after having worked in shipyard ...
) barges in and announces to the teacher and the students that Gavino must leave school and tend the family sheep. Under his father's watchful eyes and the victim of his sadistic behavior, Gavino passes the next fourteen years tending sheep in the Sardinian mountains. There he begins to discover “things” for himself and to rebel against his father.
Gavino is rescued from his family and his isolation when he is called for military service. During his time with the army he learns about electronics, the Italian language and classical music, yearning all the while for a university education.
When Gavino returns home, he declares to his father that he will attend university. His father is against this and tells him that he will throw him out of the family home. They have a nasty fight, but Gavino eventually attends university and emerges as a brilliant student. He becomes a linguist, specializing in the origins of the
Sardinian language.
The film ends in documentary style again as Gavino Ledda himself tells why he wrote his book and what Sardinian children may expect as inhabitants of a rural area with close ties to the land.
Cast
*
Omero Antonutti
Omero Antonutti (3 August 1935 – 5 November 2019) was an Italian actor and voice actor.
Biography
Born in Basiliano, in the province of Udine (in the Northeastern Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia), after having worked in shipyard ...
as Efisio
*
Saverio Marconi
Saverio Marconi (born 1 April 1948) is an Italian stage director and actor.
Life and career
Born in Rome, after his debut as a stage actor, Marconi had his breakout role in 1977 playing Gavino Ledda in the Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's drama fi ...
as Gavino
*
Marcella Michelangeli
Marcella Michelangeli (born 28 January 1943) is an Italian former actress and singer.
Biography
Born Marcella Gherardi in Uscio, Genoa, she won several beauty contests at a young age, including Miss Liguria. While a student at the School of Fi ...
as Mother
* Fabrizio Forte as Young Gavino
*
Nanni Moretti
Giovanni "Nanni" Moretti (; born 19 August 1953) is an Italian film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor.
His films have won accolades including a Palme d'Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival for ''The Son's Room'', a Silver Bear at the ...
as Cesare
*
Gavino Ledda
Gavino Ledda (; born 30 December 1938) is an author and a scholar of the Italian language and of Sardinian. He is best known for his autobiographical work ''Padre Padrone'' (1975).
Biography
Early life
Ledda was born in Siligo, in the Province ...
as Himself
Music
*
Johann Strauss II: Overture from ''
Die Fledermaus
' (, ''The Flittermouse'' or ''The Bat'', sometimes called ''The Revenge of the Bat'') is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée, which premiered in 1874.
Background
The original li ...
'' (accordion/radio scene)
*
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition r ...
:
Clarinet Concerto
A clarinet concerto is a concerto for clarinet; that is, a musical composition for solo clarinet together with a large ensemble (such as an orchestra or concert band). Albert Rice has identified a work by Giuseppe Antonio Paganelli as possibly th ...
* ''
Trink, trink, Brüderlein trink'' (German
Volksmusik
Alpine folk music (german: Alpenländische Volksmusik; German's ''Volksmusik'' means "people's music" or as a Germanic connotative translation, "folk's music") is the common umbrella designation of a number of related styles of traditional folk ...
)
Critical reception
Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...
, film critic for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
,'' praised the film and wrote, "''Padre Padrone'' is stirringly affirmative. It's also a bit simple: The patriarchal behavior of Gavino's father is so readily accepted as an unfathomable given constant that the film never offers much insight into the man or the culture that fostered him. Intriguingly aberrant behavior is chalked up to tradition, and thus robbed of some of its ferocity. But the film is vivid and very moving, coarse but seldom blunt, and filled with raw landscapes that underscore the naturalness and inevitability of the father-son rituals it depicts."
''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' magazine wrote, "Around the initiation of a seven-year-old boy into the lonely life of sheep herder until his triumphant rift at the age of 20 with a remarkably overbearing father-patriarch (Omero Antonutti), the Taviani brothers have for the most part succeeded in adapting a miniature epic...In a long final part, accenting the boy's iron will to learn right up to a high school diploma, the final showdown between patriarch and rebel son is perhaps a more consequent narrative."
On
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has an
approval rating of 100% based on 6 reviews with an average score of 7.3/10.
The Japanese filmmaker
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...
cited this movie as one of his 100 favorite films.
Awards
Wins
*
Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the fest ...
: Interfilm Grand Prix, Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani; 1977.
*
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
:
FIPRESCI Prize Competition, Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani; Golden Palm, Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani; 1977.
*
David di Donatello Awards, Italy: Special David, Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani; 1978.
*
Nastro d'Argento
The Nastro d'Argento, also known by its translated name Silver Ribbon, is an Italian film award awarded each year since 1946 by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists (Italian: ''Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani ...
Best Director (Regista del Miglior Film Italiano), Vittorio Taviani and Paolo Taviani; Best New Actor (Migliore Attore Esordiente), Saverio Marconi; 1978.
Nominations
*
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
: BAFTA Film Award, Best Newcomer,
Saverio Marconi
Saverio Marconi (born 1 April 1948) is an Italian stage director and actor.
Life and career
Born in Rome, after his debut as a stage actor, Marconi had his breakout role in 1977 playing Gavino Ledda in the Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's drama fi ...
; 1978.
References
External links
*
*
''Padre Padrone''at
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
*
{{Palme d'Or 1960-1979
1977 films
1977 drama films
Films based on non-fiction books
Films directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
Italian drama films
1970s Italian-language films
Palme d'Or winners
Social realism in film
Films set in Sardinia
Sardinian-language films
Latin-language films
1970s Italian films