Meredith likes foreign languages, and she has a special love of Italian. From time to time I try to take this into consideration when planning special evenings. Foreign language films tend to be moderately tough to come by, and ones that would mean something special to Mer are even harder to find. This has led to a spectacular track record for my expeditions into foreign cinema.

Years ago when we were still living in Chicago, I wanted to plan a romantic evening. I planned supper and had candles at the ready, and I wanted to get a romantic Italian film for Mer. I went to Blockbuster, which, being in Chicago, had a pretty good foreign language section. I perused the selections and found a likely candidate. It was modern (I like older films, but I prefer good film quality and good sound with foreign films), and had a sweet-looking cover of a man, a woman, and a child all smiling. Mer had recently been stressing the importance of a pure viewing, so I did not read the back of the movie – I did not want to ruin the surprise. I got the film and went home with my romantic treasure. I put it in the player, and Mer and I snuggled up on the couch, ready to be moved by the glories of love in Italian. We were not disappointed. Until the Nazis showed up. Turns out that “La Vita e Bella” was, in English, “Life is Beautiful,” a movie about a father’s love in a concentration camp. Fantastic movie with a moving story. NOT a date movie. We were both glad to have seen the film, but did not feel the “warm and fuzzies” after seeing it.

Meredith spent a year in Romania teaching English. Although she was in Romania, she was in in Transylvania, which is mostly Hungarian ethnically, and her school was the Hungarian school in town. So, Hungarian is also special to her, so I decided one day to get a Hungarian movie. Back to my trusty Chicago Blockbuster. They actually had a Hungarian movie, and it looked cute. The English title was “A Hungarian Fairy Tale,” and it was about a boy looking for his father after his mother is killed, and of the government worker who helps him. A nice sweet movie, right? I’m still not sure, because it ranks as the oddest movie I have ever seen. There was no logic to the sequence of events that I could determine, and while much of the movie probably referred to Hungarian folk tales, the symbolism was lost on us. The movie (to us) was stunningly weird. The ending still makes me shake my head in a “what the…?” sort of way.

Flash ahead over 5 years. This last week was Meredith’s birthday. I had previously gone looking for a sweet Italian movie to show on a special occasion, and her birthday seemed a perfect time.

A word on trying to buy an Italian film at Borders – if you want a film made after 1970, you are going to have a very hard time. The foreign language section is (in descending order) made up of French, Spanish, Chinese of various kinds, then other languages. So, your choices in Italian are very limited. I looked at every film in the section, and was getting depressed about my choices when I came across “The Tree of Wooden Clogs.” It was copyright 2004 (so should have good sound and film quality), and the back sounded sweet – “…a poignant look at rural peasant life in Northern Italy at the turn of the century. This moving story brings to life the hardships and adversity facing a family struggling to survive under oppressive rule. At a great sacrifice, a family sends their young son to school to learn in lieu of having him work on the farm. Relying on his precious pair of clogs, the little boy must walk the long distance to school every day. When they break, his father sneaks into a prized grove in their village to obtain the wood for a new pair. The callous, wealthy landlord catches him and he is punished severely for his infraction.” The film won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Okay. So it is not necessarily a romantic film, but it sure sounded like an inspiring triumph-of-the-human-spirit kind of film. So, I bought it. On Mer’s birthday, we got some take-out food, I put the movie in the DVD player and we settled down on the couch to be incensed at the evil landlord and sympathize with heroic poor family (at least that is what I was expecting – Mer was on a “pure viewing”). A few surprises awaited:
1. The film was made in 1978 – the 2004 copyright must be for the English DVD. It had okay film quality, and the sound sounded like it was coming out of a well anytime there was a wagon or horse on screen.
2. The film turned out to be 3 hours long – too long to see on Mer’s birthday since she was bogged down with grading. We had to watch it over two nights.
3. The little-boy part of the story occupied about 10 minutes of the three hours.
4. The movie told the stories of the five families who lived in the same farming complex, with occasional very confusing short shots of the wealthy landlord. The subplots included:
    – A man who finds a gold coin and hides it in a horse’s hoof, and then gets mad when the horse “loses” his coin.
    – A widow who washes laundry to feed her five children who might get sent to an orphanage (but that tension is resolved in about 2 minutes of film time when the oldest son declares he will work more if he has to).
    – A grandfather who has schemes to get his tomatoes to market three weeks before everyone else.
    – A young couple who courts, get married, spends their honeymoon in a convent where they adopt a one-year-old child.
    – A father and son who fight all the time.
    – A festival celebrating the village being saved from the Spanish 400 years before by a miracle. It involves a merry-go-round.
    – Best of all for a birthday celebration, it shows the live butchering of a goose and an enormous hog. Nothing says romance like cutting a pig in half. Really in half. On film. Ugh.

On top of all this, the main characters speak very little, so Mer and I did not even get to hear much Italian. Another foreign language winner that I picked!

I did finally get wise and I have looked up movies on the internet. These seem highly regarded, and I hope to get them someday so Mer can hear a good Italian film:
Bicycle Thief
Ciao Professore!
Bread and Tulips

Mer has had better luck with Italian films, and these are very good:
Cinema Paradiso
Il Postino (The Postman)
Johnny Stecchino (Johnny Toothpick)

Until next time, vedali ai film!