Details
Movie Description
Dramatizing a year in the life of northern Italian peasants at the turn of the century, Ermanno Olmi's THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS pays loving tribute to both the neo-realist style of filmmaking and a rural way of life that no longer exists. Hoping to create a better life for themselves, a poor family decide to send their young son to school despite the crushing sacrifice involved. When the boy's wooden clogs break on the long journey home, the seemingly minor incident sets into motion a series of tragedies that reverberate throughout the peasants' lives. Olmi's slice-of-life film--which he wrote, directed, shot, and edited--uses this central story as a launchpad to document, in moving detail, rural life under oppressive poverty. As the camera lingers patiently over women handwashing laundry on the banks of a river or farmers preparing a pig for slaughter, the quasi-documentary images transform these mundane tasks of peasant life into an almost sacramental epic of grace and beauty.
Synopsis
A little boy breaks his precious pair of clogs, which he needs for his long trek to school. Desperate for wood to make a new pair, his father sneaks into a prized grove in their small village. When he's caught, the unfeeling, wealthy landlord punishes him severely for his transgression. This small incident, and the various viewpoints of the peasants, reveal in beautiful detail rural life under oppressive rule.
Industry Reviews
Included in the New York Times's "10 BEST FILMS OF 1979"
New York Times - p.II:1 - Vincent Canby (12/30/1979)
"...It may well be a masterpiece....A profoundly serious film that stands outside time and fashion."
New York Times - Vincent Canby (06/01/1979)
"...A slow, lovely, three-hour Ermanno Olmi movie about Italian peasants..."
USA Today - Mike Clark (11/30/1990)
"...The non-professional cast gave veracity to scenes of hardship and enterprise during the course of a year, with a particularly moving performance from Luigi Ornaghi..."
Sight and Sound - Lucy Neville (05/01/2002)
4 stars out of 5 -- "Ermanno Olmi teases irresistible turns from the non-professional cast and sifts through a world astonishingly rich with detail and beauty."
Total Film - Jonathan Crocker (11/01/2007)
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