The Way We Laughed (1998) User Reviews

Characters and Fraternal Sacrifices

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 19 January 2009]

In 1958, the illiterate and naive hard worker Giovanni (Enrico Lo Verso) comes from Sicily to Turin to visit his younger and spoiled brother Pietro (Francesco Giuffrida), who is studying supported by Giovanni. While Giovanni sacrifices his life and decides to stay in Turin working hard to give condition to his brother to become a teacher, the dishonest Pietro is an arrogant liar, skipping classes and failing in the exams. A couple of years later, when Pietro vanishes, Giovanni goes haywire. In the early 60's, Pietro has just graduated in high-school; he seeks Giovanni out and finds that his brother is married; leader of the local labor union organization; and leaning how to write, but has lost his innocence. Their lives will never be the same after their reunion.

"Così Ridevano" is a human movie about the relationship between brothers, and characters and fraternal sacrifices. The story is developed from 1958 to 1964, showing the economical situation of Italy, more specifically of Turin, and how the Southern immigrants from Sicily were treated and explored by their employers. It is touching to see how Giovanni respects the books and sees the importance of education contrasting in a counterpoint with the feelings of his reckless brother. The screenplay is divided in six chapters ("arrivals", "deceptions", "money", "letters", "blood" and "families") and uses ellipsis, jumping through the years and leaving many situations unresolved as if they were kept in secret. The storyline has many points in common with Luchino Visconti's masterpiece "Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli" (Italy in early 60's, the fight for survival of a family from the countryside in Milano and the relationship among brothers). However, the plot is never corny and the conclusion is totally unexpected and unpredictable. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Assim É Que Se Ria" ("That's the Way We Laughed")

the way families are

[donqt · 7/10 · 17 June 2002]

The Way We Laughed works best as a study of familial obligation. The assumptions that "Blood" result in, the mendacity that can occur only within the structure of brotherly (sisterly/fatherly, etc.) expectation, and the assumption (or non-assumption) of responsibilities that either lie in the character, or despite the character. There's some good stuff about class urban/mainland prejudice included in the film, and some comments about the nature of intelligence. All told via a narrative structure that I find particularly pleasing. By skipping from year to year, we see growth and change, but there's a certain amount of work that we need to do to fill in the intervening spaces. This film makes that work worth it, although near the end I found myself wondering how long it would go on.

How -do- you get four elephants in a Fiat?

[=G= · 7/10 · 15 February 2004]

"The Way We Laughed" is plaintive, unhappy drama about two Sicilian brothers who migrate to Turin, Italy in the late 50's where the older and somewhat duller brother toils as a laborer so his younger brother can reap the benefits of school. This very Italian film peers deeply into the brotherly relationship as it skips through time and circumstance ultimately revealing the true character of the principals. Slow moving, methodical, and two hours long, this film will likely test the patience of most American audiences, especially those less familiar with the subtleties of Italian culture, who may question whether the payoff is worth the wait though the talent of an able auteur and cast are above reproach. (B)

A near-masterpiece, highly recommended.

[Chris Knipp · 13 March 2005]

Watched on Italian DVD (using the standard-Italian subtitles for the hearing-impaired to decode the Sicilian dialect) for the first time March 2005. Winner of the top prize "Leone d'Oro" at Venice. Actually available as of 2004 on a US code DVD.

The title, referring to an old joke column, is ironic. The film's review of Italian post-war economic miracle years is deeply tinged with sadness and a sense of the price paid in innocence lost to gain security and status. The whole focus is on the love between two Sicilian brothers, Giovanni and Pietro. The angel-faced Pietro (Francesco Giuffrida) from the first appears devious. When his brother arrives at the station, he slinks off and hides from him. He's lazy, a dandy, a liar, a faker, a bad seed. Yet he's worshiped by the innocent, muscular, illiterate Giovanni (Enrico Lo Verso), who has turned up with other southern immigrants at the Turin railway station intending just to visit his baby brother as the film opens and then stays on in the North to support him.

The mise-en-scène is visually beautiful but conventionalizes the period into a kind of grimy poetry more worthy of twenty or thirty years earlier, no doubt consciously echoing Italian neorealist films (Amelio has been called the new De Sica) or becoming a glossier color version of Visconti's mournful epic tragedy of southern Italians in Milan, "Rocco and His Brothers" (1960). My DVD's Italian jacket copy translates a paragraph from Stephen Holden's 2001 NYTimes review expanding one of its key ideas: "'Così rideveno'has the power to keep its own secrets," this Italian version reads. "Without ever being moralistic, by the end it becomes the metaphor for a whole society that makes a kind of tacit pact with itself never to look too deeply into the hidden effects social processes have on individuals and their destinies." The interest -- and yet the frustration -- of the film is that its sequences each appear revelatory, but shed little light on the intervening periods of time. It is organized in a "rather elegant" manner (Rosenbaum) into a structure of microscopic views of single days out of each year from 1959 through 1964, each day designated by a key word: "arrivals," "deceptions," "money", "letters, "blood," and "families." This neat structure masks a surrounding mystery in the relationship between the two brothers, and we deduce for ourselves from the way they seek out and avoid each other how alike and interdependent they are. Each cherishes illusions about the other; one is proud, the other ashamed. Vivid and touching as the film is, it's also highly artificial, notably in how little of the two characters' lives is made clear, how little the world outside their relationship is explored.

Metaphorical indeed, "Così ridevano" explores an inseparable (and ultimately false) dichotomy between innocence and experience, naiveté and sophistication that may go to the heart not only of North-South relations but of the Italian soul. Both actors, Amelio regular Lo Verso and newcomer Giuffreda, are remarkable, and the scenes between them are heartbreaking.

So far the only other Amelio film I've seen is "The Housekeys" ("Le chiavi di casa," 2004), which being a documentary-like chronicle of a short stretch of contemporary time, seems so different, and yet on reflection is so similar in feeling. Obviously Amelio is an extraordinary director and I must see "Lamarica" and "Stolen Children" ("Il ladro di bambini"), both also starring the intense, soulful Lo Verso, which have received the highest praise of any of Amelio's films.

an undeserving Golden Lion winner for Amelio

[lasttimeisaw · 6/10 · 1 October 2015]

A tower of strength in the contemporary Italian terrain, Gianni Amelio's Venice Golden Lion winner THE WAY WE LAUGHED (my second entry after TKEY KEYS TO THE HOUSE 2004, 7/10), his sixth feature, is an emotion-charged story at the end of 50s, Giovanni (Lo Verso), an illiterate Sicilian young man, arrives in Torin to reunite with his young brother Pietro (Giuffrida), who is studying in high school.

Captioned the chapters by years and key words, the film infallibly circles around the two brothers, about their incompatible interrelation, which can be approximately summed up as follows, Giovanni unyieldingly insists that Pietro should finish his study and become a teacher, to fulfil a dream he is unable to pursue, as if this means the whole world to him, while Pietro, under such pressure to excel in the class, has to live in the fear that he might fail to live up to his dear brother's expectation, which establishes a deep discord between them. Life rarely goes according to one's wishful blueprint, however Amelio's meticulous endeavour, sometimes perilously close to mushy and over-indulgent, is to testify that blood is thicker than water, no matter what, even you have to murder a person, there is a silver lining awaits you.

Attentively restoring a retro setting of a period ripe with absolute poverty and blatant opportunism, Amelio opts for an alternative to green-light the success of the uneducated- but-determined money-grabber other than the younger-but-intellectual generation, eventually it is the latter's voluntary sacrifice saves the former from going down to the prison, so that the former can secure his hectoring business and start a genuine Italian family, with a sincere guilt compelling him to make up for the latter, but in the coda, after a heavy-handed device to sabotage a formal farewell ceremony, it leaves us wonder, how the two brothers have changed internally during the time-span, the same four-elephants-in-a- fiat joke caps the film, yet, they have become more distant from each other both physically and mentally.

Enrico Lo Verso, the leading actor of Amelio's more well-received works (THE STOLEN CHILDREN 1992 and LAMERICA 1994), greatly elicits Giovanni's devoted affection towards his beloved brother, addresses the most cringe-worthy dialogue (in Sicilian dialect, sounds like an utterly different language from Italian) with unaffected candour. Giuffrida, the young actor, was only 17 during the filming, is a few notches below by comparison, his Pietro is less sympathetic and his emotional spectrum is more intangible to pin down.

Many a time, the chapter-to-chapter cohesion fails to be fluent, viewers are prone to feel disconnected and confused about the happenings, for example, Giovanni's intentional tantrum in Pietro's school is introduced abruptly since Amelio coyly refuses to lay bare what has happened to Pietro, similarly, from his disappearance to a miraculous triumph aided by a private teacher, Pietro's transformation is bluntly conjured up without any weight. For what it's worth, THE WAY WE LAUGHED feels a tad undeserving of its garland, nostalgic, mawkish and a run-of-the-mill drama falls flat on its face.

Lugubrious Tale of Two Brothers Illuminates But At A Glacial Pace

[museumofdave · 7/10 · 29 April 2013]

What a strange film! An immersion into a worker's life in Turin, and more particularly contrasting the lives to two brothers, the older, less educated, devoted obsessively to the idea that his younger sibling is going to excel, and the audience seldom clear about what the strange, younger lad is up to.

The Way We Laughed is loaded with exciting Italian locales, flirts briefly with political movements, but the focus is always on what's going to happen to the relationship of these very different men. In no way a cheerer-upper, and not exciting in any conventional way, the performances are superb and the narrative compellingly mysterious if the viewer has the patience for scenes that attempt to accurately capture the process of decision making, to the way relationships often work.

A Brother's Debt

[jsmith1480 · 10/10 · 12 February 2004]

Set in late '50's, early '60's. Brave emigrants from impoverished Sicily make their way in industrial Turin. This movie gives you time with a good-hearted Catanese, Giovanni (Enrico Lo Verso), a man who loves desperately, adoringly. The object: his teenaged brother Pietro (Francesco Giuffrida) who is urbane while Giovanni is elemental.

Giovanni's love and personal honor require that he believe no ill about Pietro. The older brother works like an ox to shield his Pietro-on-a-pedestal from the harsh world of manual labor, to give him better lodgings than he himself enjoys and to keep him in school (where Pietro actually is an inveterate hookey-player and a bored, listless daydreamer).

Though Pietro is detached he nevertheless feels guilt for his deceptions and he loves Giovanni for his sacrifice and natural goodness. ("Giovanni is far too good," he says to the whore-waif his older brother has taken under his protection. "He loves everybody").

But while the facile and literate Pietro drifts, the illiterate but intelligent Giovanni makes useful friends, exploits opportunities and rises in life.

Always Pietro remains at the center of Giovanni's heart. And one night Pietro is given the opportunity, finally, to repay Giovanni's selfless devotion.

If there is a "revelation" in this film, it is near the end when we see that the adoring Giovanni has an unexamined, unquestioned faith that his Pietro has the same devotion to him. As a given, he believes that brotherly sacrifice is a two-way street. The immense decision that his younger brother has made against himself and for Giovanni is merely the kind of thing brothers do for eachother. In a horrifying moment Giovanni opens to us: his great love is unselfconsciously, blanketingly possessive, devouring.

Palermo-born Lo Verso is a great actor. That his beautiful, movingly expressive face is not world-famous is a misfortune. But he is only forty now (early thirties in "Cosi Ridivano"). There is time. Jim Smith-----------------------

A soulful and captivating film

[howard.schumann · 9/10 · 2 February 2004]

Just released on DVD, Gianni Amelio's 1998 film The Way We Laughed is a heartfelt chronicle of the fortunes of two brothers over a six-year period in postwar Italy that parallels the growth of the country from an agricultural to an urbanized, industrial society. Winner of the Grand Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, the film derives its title from its constant reference to old-fashioned jokes on the back page of an Italian magazine from the fifties. Though I do not feel it is quite on the same level as Amelio's earlier work (L'America, Stolen Children), The Way We Laughed is a soulful and captivating film that evokes a world little remembered except in the great Italian neo-realism films from the 40s and 50s. But the film is far from being a historical or political drama. As Sokurov explored the complex relationships between mothers and fathers and their sons in his Russian films, Amelio investigates the bond between brothers and the issues that result from self-sacrifice in a close-knit Italian family.

The film is separated into six parts labeled "Arrivals," "Deceptions," "Money," "Letters," "Blood" and "Families", each taking place on one day during the period from 1958 to 1964. While this technique allows us to understand the events taking place in Italy during this period, the sudden changes in the lives of the characters is difficult to follow and we are left having to put the pieces of the puzzle together on our own. As the film opens, Giovanni (Enrico Lo Verso), a poor illiterate worker arrives from Sicily to visit his teenage brother Pietro (Francesco Giuffrida) in the industrial north of Italy who is studying to become a teacher. Determined that his brother Pietro will get a good education, he decides to remain in Turin to support him.

It is clear from the outset that all is not well with Pietro. He hides behind a pillar at the train station rather than meeting his brother, then goes out of way to help a Sicilan family who are lost until he finally gives up in disgust. He is very handsome but there is a haunted look in his eyes and it is never clear what his secrets are. Giovanni, magnificently portrayed by Lo Verso, is quite different. He is a giving person -- open and warm hearted. He sacrifices for Pietro, working low paying menial jobs but the younger brother seems unmotivated and does not take studying very seriously. Their love is not at issue, but each has an idealized picture of the other and they never fully come to grips with each other's reality.

As the years go by, Giovanni begins to move up the economic ladder and becomes a low-level Supervisor, then the boss of a cooperative. Pietro meanwhile has gone to a private teacher and has received his degree. The brothers remain close but when Pietro witnesses Giovanni getting into a fight with a presumed underworld figure, the consequences that result from self-sacrifice and the betrayal of morality are explored in a powerful conclusion. Like Giovanni's rise to a position of power through suggested shady dealings, The Way We Laughed seems to be saying that as modern Western societies have become rich, they have arrogantly forgotten the values it took them to get there.

Two brothers destroy each other's life

[sicilianuzza · 1/10 · 21 January 2006]

I have two adult sons and understand the fierce love and hate; this story is a muddle. It starts very confusing and keeps the plot obscured until the final Huh? I am a native born Sicilian speaker, therefore, I enjoyed the period language and the contrast with Italian, but for those reading subtitles it must be even more huh? The Italian title is So, they laughed, not we laughed. It doesn't matter, no one laughs, not even once. Character motivation is not supplied through the dialogue. The viewer is tormented with the character but the character knows more than the viewer, maybe. That is a mystery never to be solved. I've read the Italian reviews and comments. Neither language nor culture is the problem here. It's a lack of writing. Good acting and cinematography will take a film only to the screen. To be true storytelling, there has to be a plot, made believable by scenes that jell not flounder as all the scenes do in this movie.

Touching, a little off-balance, tale of brothers in Italy

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 13 December 2001]

Cosi ridevano (The Way We Laughed) is a realistic, precise on emotions story of two Sicillian brothers- both intelligent though both quite different in how they use their intelligence- who try and survive in northern Italy circa 1950's and 1960's. Sometimes it wanders, but it all comes together exquisitely when it should and it has a heartbreaking (though appropriate) ending. Kudos to co-writer/director Gianno Amelio for making one of the best Italian films in recent years. Grade: between A and A-.

mezza sola

[camel-9 · 4/10 · 16 March 2002]

"mezza sola" means half a shoe sole in italian. It is an expression used to describe something that didn't quite satisfy. After all the oop-la, the expectations for this motion picture were high. But at the end, our "stomachs" were left empty. Production-wise, it was poor: most of the shots are indoors, with very few outdoor shots. In the entire movie length, only one vehicle is seen. The movie is billed as the emigrant experience of a southern italian to the industrialized city of Turin in the late '50s. It is actually a family drama of the relationship of two brothers. It used the Turin emigrant story as background, and yet the city was hardly seen. If the movie was billed as the story of two brothers in China's Shangai, one could hardly find a problem with it (I say this to emphasize how much the "indoor" shots were dense). Also, each single take seemed to be three seconds too loooong. It is as if the director is in love with the story, he is financing the movie with his own money, and thus he feels justified to make his story told on his long, boring way. The style of the cinematography and costumes is a Spielberg-like focus on a few pivotal items such as rope being used to tie shut-closed the overbulging suitcases, the rawness of clothing, and the thick sician accented dialogues. But, like Spielberg's, this picture was noticeable in that it was a historical drama *intentionally* retouched awash in a sepia-backgrounded memory. To me, it trivialized the story. A more sucessfull aproach is Lina Wertmuller's, that, while certain traits are over emphasized, but justified if the film is not a drama but a comedy, in which the focus is not the manieristic style itself but the story, this in a mannieristic background.

A work of art that packs an emotional wallop

[Peegee-3 · 11 February 2002]

This is to me the finest foreign language film to appear on American shores in many a moon. Gianni Amelio as well as the two splendid actors, Enrico Lo Verso and Francesco Giuffrida are to be congratulated for giving us this amazingly moving film about the human and fallible relationship between two brothers...a relationship laced with unabashed love (yet never sentimentally portrayed) that brings a feeling that these are two sides of one person...The older brother is intelligent, but illiterate and therefore enamored of education (a scene in which he hugs his brother's books through the streets of Turin without a word of dialogue makes a fully felt experience). His sacrifices to further his young brother's studies is brilliantly off-set by the ironic disdain that the 16 year old demonstrates...until he later comes to realize the value of his intellectual capacity.

The non-linear structure...set on six separate days, from 1958 to 1964...is completely in keeping with the curvilinear unfolding of the events and emotional reactions throughout this splendid film.

It's powerful ending achieves the exact right tone. I only wish that awful music that accompanies the closing credits didn't nearly jar my sensibilities out of the rich rewards of the movie.

Ambitious, and often successful, study of brotherhood and change

[runamokprods · 8/10 · 14 September 2010]

Beautifully photographed, and mostly very well acted (with a few over-the-top moments), this is a complex, odd, and often fascinating look at the relationship between two brothers in Italy.

It shows one day in their life each year between 1958 and 1964, avoiding movie convention by not filling in the details of what's gone on during the time in between. It's left to us to figure out, or imagine.

While brave and challenging, the characters never fully develop, sometimes feeling more sketchy and symbolic than full blooded.

Early on I thought I might be watching a masterpiece, but as it went on, I felt (to quote Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenberg) 'guilty for not liking it more'. Still, a strong and original enough film that I'd like to revisit it one day, and see if it grows even deeper on 2nd viewing.

Mysteries of Turin

[Baceseras · 10/10 · 24 July 2017]

This film about the complicated bonds of love and loyalty between two brothers is carried forward on the strength of its mysteries. The profoundest mysteries inhere in the subject, of course; others arise from Gianni Amelio's elliptical, episodic approach. Beginning in 1958, the brothers are part of the Sicilian migration to the industrialized North of Italy, specifically to the city of Turin. The younger Pietro has been there for a year already, going to school; he's the White Hope of his family, the one with brains, expected to amount to something – and chafing at the responsibility, though delighting in the bella figura he gets to cut. The elder brother Giovanni arrives intending just a short visit, but winds up staying on; at first sight he's a sweet-natured lunk, but then we see his steel. He goes to work to support Pietro's schooling; is exploited by the labor brokers who take an extortionate cut of the migrants' wages; little by little gets out from under them, and then replaces them: a familiar migrant's tale, one that usually brings tragedy in its wake.

Everyone in the film is more and different than a first estimate can take in. They make choices that defy our prediction. We see the effects, but learn the why and wherefore only partially, and always belatedly – just before the story propels us forward a year or so in time, and we have to get our bearings all over again.

The large-scale recreation of the city of Turin in its historical moment is beautiful, melancholy and alluring. Amelio has a showman- poet's sense of just how long to tantalize us before pulling back to reveal the full scope of this wonder: those are moments of quiet awe. At times, too, the characters are foregrounded while the city stretches wide and deep – miles deep – behind them. It almost could be rear-projection or green-screen trickery, but then the characters turn and walk off into the distance, which is real. The city feels a living thing then. And as they move away from us there comes a pang, as if foreboding a time when the loss will be final.

A great disappointment

[danisa2 · 4/10 · 25 November 2002]

After seeing Lamerica by the same director, I was hoping to see a much better film. It is the story of two Sicilian brothers who go to Turin, in northern Italy, in the early 60's. Their condition is miserable, poverty is rampant, prejudice against the southerners is high, but the older brother, motivated by great love and undying faith in his younger brother, is determined to send him to school and works under unbearable conditions to support him and see that he becomes a teacher. The younger one, however, is not particularly fond of school and resents his brother's attention and expectations. The acting is simply awful, consisting mostly of heavy breathing when the emotions run high. The younger brother displays one or two expressions throughout the movie. The plot is underdeveloped, showing disconnected events in chronological order. The characters are underdeveloped: there is no explanation for the unexpected role reversal that takes place in the second half of the film. I suppose the movie wants to show how the big, industrial city, (portrayed as constantly dark, rainy and cold, although it is not so in reality) currupts the simple, good hearted Sicilians, but it does not do a good job of it. At one point, while the movie is focusing on the younger one, the older brother suddenly becomes a powerful mafia boss Why? No explanation. He later leaves the good-hearted prostitute he was living with (and whose child he was supporting) to marry the daughter of a wealthy "Torinese", an act symbolic of his total moral degradation. In the course of his criminal dealings we see him kill someone, and we later find out that the younger brother went to prison for his crime. What happened? We are not told. I could not find anything redeeming in the film. A great disappointment!

A film of originality and depth

[kinolieber · 9/10 · 17 January 2005]

This is one of the most fascinating films I have seen in a long time. It manages to tell a rather complex story by showing us only six days in real time. By doing so, it creates an unusual dramatic intensity since much of our attention is devoted to observing changes in the characters since the previous segment's day. The story itself is also unusual because it focuses on an almost obsessive familial love between two brothers, which at first seems supportive, loving and nurturing, but eventually morphs into an utterly corrupt and destructive relationship. This tale, upon reflection, reveals itself to be a meditation, a fable, an allegory for much more than the love of two brothers for each other: it is a richly textured, and multi-layered examination of poverty, class, culture, and morality, set in the historical context of post-war Italy of the late 50's and early 60's. The depiction of the desperate plight of the underclass of that era brought back memories of the neo-realist films of that era. But unlike those films, this one uses an almost painterly style, using vivid images and expressive compositions. The sound design as well conveys the chaos of urban life in Turin.

The success of one brother at the expense of the other, somehow resonated with me in a way I still can't put my finger on. This is a film that will stay with you, and leave you pondering its ambiguities for a long time after you see it.

usual immigrant family melodrama

[arzewski · 5/10 · 29 January 2007]

For some reason, I was expecting something better. Glad I saw it on DVD, because this way I was able to fast forward some of the slow moments (and still, even at 4x FF, it seemed slow...). My major complaint is that this was just the usual story of a struggling immigrant family, with nobody to help, you against the mean world that doesn't understand you. Too many clichés. There were some opportunities lost in branching off into other possibly side stories. For example, the scene of the younger brother looking for his brother in the FIAT factory lunch cafeteria, and there he finds an interesting character that attempts to explain where he could find his brother. Or the scene of the political demonstrators with red communist flags that with fluidity surrounded the older brother. TREVICO TORINO was a movie made in the early 70's, but there the movie had more punch. Production-wise, this movie is quite an endeavor, particularly in trying to recreate the style and look of the late 50's and early 60's, when the first southerners (the so-called "terroni") were flooding the sophisticated metropolis that used to be Torino. The daily newspaper of the Italian Comunist Party, "L'Unita'", had a cartoon called Gasparazzo, about a character "metalmeccanico" auto factory worker, and his life in Torino while his wife and three children waited in Sicily. In that cartoon, the story was about life struggles, finding lodging, finding friendship, finding good food, finding a social life, and finding romance. Some of that was portrayed in the movie, but in many cases, excessively so. And a bit of comedy could have been introduced, but no, the movie was just always angry, frustrated. But, hey, life is also about roses, not just bread.

Slices of life.

[dbdumonteil · 19 May 2002]

POSSIBLE SPOILERS§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§

The brothers subject is recurrent in the Italian cinema.To name but three,Visconi's "Rocco ei suoi fratelli",Rosi's "tre fratelli "and Zurlini's "cronaca familiare",the latter recalling Ameli's work the most.

This movie is in stark contrast with the three previous ones,because it's not linear.There are gaps which the audience has got to fill:some important events are not on the screen:Pietro with his teachers,why he ran away,the reasons for the crime,and why Pietro is arrested when the picture shows that he's innocent,the list could go on endlessly.

Don't get me wrong;I enjoy this movie very much.The director knew his subject could verge on melodrama and he avoided it masterfully.After all,we only know the other people during slices of life,unless we live with them every day and even...Others' life are jigsaw puzzles of which we can only try to fit the pieces together again.

The elder brother lives in a dream,and his dream is not over when the end blatantly denies it .He sacrifices his life to allow his brother to become a teacher.Some of his occupations are shady,that's the least we can say,and the end of the fifth segment remains highly ambiguous:did he become a coward ?The young brother,Pietro,is ambiguous to a fault:unsympathetic at first encounter,his character is not that simple:he might be hateful(his attitude with the poor family at the beginning) or generous (if we admit,and we should,that he did not commit the crime);a lazy dunce (we never see him study) or a brilliant kid (he can recite any poem of the writer of his exam);an elegant dandy or a human wreck (the last segment).

This last segment is the most impressive:a director has rarely been more disturbing:while the big brother's words proudly praises Pietro's qualities and his brilliant future ,the picture refutes it completely. And we almost believe in his laudatory terms.It takes the tutor's explanations to crack the mirror.

But the mirror is intact for the big brother.

A great disappointment

[danisa2 · 4/10 · 25 November 2002]

After seeing Lamerica by the same director, I was hoping to see a much better film. It is the story of two Sicilian brothers who go to Turin, in northern Italy, in the early 60's. Their condition is miserable, poverty is rampant, prejudice against the southerners is high, but the older brother, motivated by great love and undying faith in his younger brother, is determined to send him to school and works under unbearable conditions to support him and see that he becomes a teacher. The younger one, however, is not particularly fond of school and resents his brother's attention and expectations. The acting is simply awful, consisting mostly of heavy breathing when the emotions run high. The younger brother displays one or two expressions throughout the movie. The plot is underdeveloped, showing disconnected events in chronological order. The characters are underdeveloped: there is no explanation for the unexpected role reversal that takes place in the second half of the film. I suppose the movie wants to show how the big, industrial city, (portrayed as constantly dark, rainy and cold, although it is not so in reality) corrupts the simple, good hearted Sicilians, but it does not do a good job of it. At one point, while the movie is focusing on the younger one, the older brother suddenly becomes a powerful Mafia boss Why? No explanation. He later leaves the good-hearted prostitute he was living with (and whose child he was supporting) to marry the daughter of a wealthy "Torinese", an act symbolic of his total moral degradation. In the course of his criminal dealings we see him kill someone, and we later find out that the younger brother went to prison for his crime. What happened? We are not told. I could not find anything redeeming in the film. A great disappointment!

Two brothers in a hostile environment.

[naxash · 27 September 1999]

The film is set in the late 50s and 60s. Pietro and Giovanni are two brothers from Sicily. One's already stranded in Torino, the other follows. The older one, Giovanni, works so that much-admired Pietro can go to school. But something doesn't work: Pietro's busy cutting school, he's one of the worst pupils in his class -- probably even the worst. Meanwhile Giovanni's working his a-- off, all for his little brother.

The two brothers lose sight of each other after some time. Pietro recites poetry thanks to a private teacher of his, but the meaning of the poetry is still hidden to him. Giovanni, on the other hand, is now the boss of a cooperative. We don't get to know much about what he's actually doing. He kills someone. In the half-criminal underground in which the despised Southern Italians in the 50s and 60s are working, the stronger survives. Before that, the two brothers met again. Pietro follows his brother and is witnesses the murder.

Giovanni in the end even gets to marry a Northern Italian woman, while Pietro sacrifices himself for his brother: he has to go to prison for a murder that not he, but his brother committed. The topics of this film, namely racism and exploitation, are still topical.