''The Tree of Wooden Clogs'' () is a 1978
Italian film
The cinema of Italy (, ) comprises the films made within Italy or by Italian directors. Since its beginning, Italian cinema has influenced film movements worldwide. Italy is one of the birthplaces of art cinema and the stylistic aspect of film h ...
written and directed by
Ermanno Olmi
Ermanno Olmi (24 July 1931 – 7 May 2018)Lane, John Francis (May 7, 2018).Ermanno Olmi obituary. ''The Guardian''. theguardian.com. Retrieved 11 May 2018. was an Italian film director and screenwriter.
Biography
Olmi was born to a Catholic ...
. The film concerns
Lombard peasant life in a ''
cascina'' (farmhouse) of the late 19th century. It has some similarities with the earlier
Italian neorealist movement, in that it focuses on the lives of the poor, and the parts were played by real farmers and locals, rather than professional actors.
It won fourteen awards including the
Palme d'or at
Cannes
Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a communes of France, commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions I ...
and the
César Award for Best Foreign Film
This is the list of winners and nominees of the César Award for Best Foreign Film (french: César du meilleur film étranger).
Winners and nominees
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
Awards by nation
Notes
See also
*Lumières A ...
. The original version of the movie is spoken in
Lombard (the
Bergamasque
The Bergamasque dialect is the western variant of the Eastern Lombard group of the Lombard language. It is mainly spoken in the province of Bergamo and in the area around Crema, in central Lombardy.
Bergamasque has official status in the pro ...
variety, an
Eastern Lombard dialect).
Plot
![Tree of the Wooden Clogs](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Tree_of_the_Wooden_Clogs.jpg)
Four
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...
families working farms for the same landlord scrape out a meagre existence in 1898
in the countryside around Bergamo. Over the course of a year, children are born, crops planted, animals slaughtered, and couples married; stories and prayers are exchanged in the families' shared farmhouse. Undercurrents of revolution are seen by the peasants but largely ignored, as a
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
rabble-rouser gives a speech at a local fair and when a newlywed couple visit the big city of
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
and witness the arrest of political prisoners. When spring comes, the father from one of the four families cuts down a tree to make wooden clogs (an
alder, aimed in the title because its wood was typically used for this kind of handwork) that his son can walk to school, but the landowner discovers this, and the family is forced off their land by the incensed landlord. The remaining families watch them go, praying for them and recognising their own fragile existence.
Cast
* Luigi Ornaghi - Batistì
* Francesca Moriggi - Batistina
* Omar Brignoli - Minec
* Antonio Ferrari - Tuni
* Teresa Brescianini - Widow Runk
* Giuseppe Brignoli - Anselmo
* Carlo Rota - Peppino
* Pasqualina Brolis - Teresina
* Massimo Fratus - Pierino
* Francesca Villa - Annetta
* Maria Grazia Caroli - Bettina
* Battista Trevaini - Il Finard
* Giuseppina Langalelli - La Moglie Finarda
* Lorenzo Pedroni - Il nonno Finard
* Felice Cervi - Uslì
Critical acclaim
British film-maker
Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh (born 20 February 1943) is an English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and further at the Camberwell School of Art, the Central School of Art and Design ...
praised the film in ''
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was fo ...
s 'Film makers on film' interview series, on 19 October 2002. Leigh pays tribute to the film’s humanity, realism, and vast scale. He called the film “extraordinary on a number of levels”, before concluding “this guy
lmiis a genius, and that's all there is to it”. Leigh has described Olmi's epic of peasant life in
Lombardy
Lombardy ( it, Lombardia, Lombard language, Lombard: ''Lombardia'' or ''Lumbardia' '') is an administrative regions of Italy, region of Italy that covers ; it is located in the northern-central part of the country and has a population of about 10 ...
as ''the ultimate location film'': " Directly, objectively, yet compassionately, it puts on the screen the great, hard, real adventure of living and surviving from day to day, and from year to year, the experience of ordinary people everywhere...the camera is always in exactly the right place...but the big question, arising out of these truthful and utterly convincing performances achieved by non-actors, always remains: how does he really do it?" When
Al Pacino
Alfredo James Pacino (; ; born April 25, 1940) is an American actor. Considered one of the most influential actors of the 20th century, he has received numerous accolades: including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy ...
was asked by the
AFI what his favourite movie was, he admitted that he "always liked ''The Tree Of Wooden Clogs''."
Gene Siskel
Eugene Kal Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the ''Chicago Tribune''. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted a series of movie review programs on television from 1975 until his d ...
loved the movie and put it on his list of the 10 Best Films of 1980.
In 2003, ''
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 ...
'' placed the film on its ''Best 1000 Movies Ever'' list.
The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.
''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 ...
'' via Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
. Published April 29, 2003. Retrieved June 12, 2008.
References
External links
*
*
*
*
''The Tree of Wooden Clogs: The Sacredness of Life as Understatement''
an essay by Deborah Young at the Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tree Of Wooden Clogs, The
1978 films
1978 drama films
Italian drama films
1970s Italian-language films
Films directed by Ermanno Olmi
Palme d'Or winners
Best Foreign Film César Award winners
Films set in 1898
Films set in Italy
Films set in Milan
1970s Italian films