Directed by Ermanno Olmi • 1978 • Italy
Starring Luigi Ornaghi, Francesca Moriggi, Omar Brignoli
A painterly and sensual immersion in late nineteenth-century Italian farm life, Ermanno Olmi’s THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS lovingly focuses on four families working for one landowner on an isolated estate in the province of Bergamo. Filming on an abandoned farm for four months, Olmi adapted neorealist techniques to tell his story, enlisting local people to live as their own ancestors had, speaking in their native dialect on locations with which they were intimately familiar. Through the cycle of seasons, of backbreaking labor, love and marriage, birth and death, faith and superstition, Olmi naturalistically evokes an existence very close to nature, celebrating its beauty, humor, and simplicity but also acknowledging the feudal cruelty that governs it. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1978, THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS is intimate in scale but epic in scope, a towering, heart-stirring work of humanist filmmaking.
Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata, with funding provided by The Film Foundation.
Up Next in Palme d’Or Winners
-
The Tin Drum
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff • 1979 • Germany
Starring David Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela WinklerOskar is born in Germany in 1924 with an advanced intellect. Repulsed by the hypocrisy of adults and the irresponsibility of society, he refuses to grow older after his third birthday. While the c...
-
Paris, Texas
Directed by Wim Wenders • 1984 • France, West Germany
Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Nastassja KinskiNew German Cinema pioneer Wim Wenders (WINGS OF DESIRE) brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in PARIS, TEXAS, a profoundly moving character study written by ...
-
Under the Sun of Satan
Directed by Maurice Pialat • 1987 • France
Starring Gérard Depardieu, Sandrine Bonnaire, Maurice PialatWinner of the Palme d’Or at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival—where its victory was greeted with more than a bit of controversy—Maurice Pialat’s searing adaptation of a novel by Georges Bernanos s...
