from “Padre padrone” to “Kaos”, five memorable films made with his brother Vittorio

Paolo Taviani died leaving behind unforgettable films, co-directed with his brother, on Italy during the Second World War, popular circles and religion. A look back at five of them.

The Taviani brothers formed a memorable duo in the history of the 7th art and have co-signed a total of around fifteen feature films, most often adaptations of Italian literature. Among them, “unforgettable, deep, committed films“, greeted Roberto Gualtieri the mayor of Rome on Thursday February 29 on

“Padre Padrone” (1977)

Adapted from the autobiographical novel by Gavino Ledda Padre padrone : The Education of a Sardinian Shepherdthe film takes place in Sardinia in the years 1940. The film received the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977. The film tells the story of little Gavino aged 5 years old, forced to drop out of school after two months to help his shepherd father look after the animals. Isolated, far from society, thanks to military service, at the age of 21 years, that he escapes the influence of his father.

Filmed as a path of initiation, the adaptation shows Gavino’s journey to enter into full contact with society. The protagonist learns to read, which is a revelation for him. Gavino manages to overcome the father’s resistance. The first guest to attend the screening of the film, the author Gavino Ledda could not help but cry when he saw the scene where the father, after beating the child, takes him in his arms and that, on the tape -sound, begins a Sardinian song of painful imploration.

“The Night of San Lorenzo” (1982)

Grand prize at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, the plot of the film follows, with a few modifications, that of the first film directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, the short documentary of 44 minutes, San Miniato luglio (1954). It was a re-enactment of the massacre carried out by the Nazis in the cathedral of their own hometown, San Miniato, in July 1944. This event, the most traumatic in the personal history of the Taviani brothers, was, inevitably, the subject of their first production and also inspired The Night of San Lorenzo.

In the film, a woman remembers another Saint Laurent night, during the last days of World War II : the Germans are retreating and want to destroy a village in order to slow down the advance of the Allies and the partisans. A group of residents, led by Galvano, refused to obey the orders of the German army and did not gather in the cathedral.

“In the film, we did not tell things as they happened, but on the contrary as they were metamorphosed in the consciousness of the survivors, in the collective imagination. (…) We have never sought to make a cinema that is too linked to history or chronicle”explained director Vittorio Taviani.

“Kaos” (1984)

Adapted from five news of the collections News for a year by Luigi Pirandello, the title of the film Kaos comes from the Sicilian name of a village near Agrigento in Sicily. Divided into four time and an epilogue, the stories are linked thanks to a black crow hovering above Sicily, a bell hanging around its neck and responsible for making the connection between each time.

The first story titled The Other Son (L’altro figlio) tells of the hatred that a mother – performed by Margarita Lozano – maintains towards one of her sons, whose disturbing physical appearance seems to be the vivid reincarnation of the man who raped her. Moon Sickness (Mal di luna) shows the love, anguish and desire of a young bride, Sidora, confronted with the unknown evil of her husband Batà. The latter is struck by uncontrollable violence on full moon nights. Requiem depicts the struggle of peasants against the bourgeois administrators of the neighboring town, Ragusa, in order to be able to bury their patriarch on their high lands of Margari, and not in the cemetery of the distant town. Finally, in the epilogue entitled Interview with the mother (Epilogo: colloquio con la madre)Pirandello speaks with his mother’s ghost about a story he wanted to write, but couldn’t because he couldn’t find the words.

Very little broadcast, the film has long been tinged with mystery and has become legendary for its spectators. The release of the film on DVD in 2006 made it possible to reconstruct the entire film and to integrate a missing story, There Jar. It was Pirandello’s more poetic and more popular version that appealed to the Taviani brothers. “Ultimately, the true identity of the writer is that of the man who collected – through the stories told to him by his nanny – these stories deeply rooted in Sicily”they say.

“Caesar Must Die” (2012)

Shot as a docufiction, performed by inmates guided by director Fabio Cavalli, the film is partly in black and white. Awarded the Golden Bear for best film at the 2012 Berlinale, it is an adaptation of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, toured with inmates in a high-security section of Rebibbia prison, in Rome.

The actors simultaneously play their own role and that of a character in the play. If Cesare deve morire remains, above all, an experience on the work and behind the scenes of the show in which theater and cinema echo each other. It also shows the reintegration process and prison life. “With gratitude to Shakespeare (…) we have appropriated his Julius Caesar, we have broken it down and then reconstructed it“, indicated the Taviani brothers.

“A Personal Matter” (2017)

Adapted from the eponymous story by Beppe Fenoglio, A private question takes as a backdrop the Italian Resistance in the mountains of the province of Cuneo (Piedmont) in 1944. Milton, a young student who became a resistance fighter, crosses, during a mission, the residence formerly inhabited by Fulvia, a teenager from Turin displaced to Alba, and with whom he is madly in love. The author Beppe Fenoglio had set the action of the story in the Langhe (where there are vineyards). When the film was being prepared, Vittorio Taviani was ill. He therefore did not participate in the filming. He died in April 2018.