Old and familiar the material in this movie surely is. The odyssey of a splinter group of Tuscan villagers, through territory murderously patrolled by German troops and diehard local Fascists, to meet up with the advancing Americans, takes us back at least to Open City and Paisan, even in such particulars as the anecdotal plot construction, the cast of archetypes, and the diet of instant irony, pathos, tragedy, humanity, etc. But the viewpoint is one appropriate to our own time and to memory: not the journalistic urgency and factuality of Rossellini, but something subjective, impressionistic, heightened and embroidered, almost folkloric -- a bedtime story in answer to the question, "What did you do in the war, Mommy?" This particular Mommy was only six years old as the war wound down; and, taking the child's-eye view as a starting point, the Taviani brothers, Paolo and Vittorio, who themselves occupied the designated time and place in their early adolescence, have reinvented the WWII movie. A distinct locale, color scheme, sound effect, bit of music (sometimes audaciously chosen), or combination thereof, together with the often roundabout way the essential information is set forth, gives event after event a specificness that amounts to actual newness. With Omero Antonutti and Margarita Lozano. (1982) — Duncan Shepherd
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