Monday, April 24 – 5 pm – room 9A
This movie is part of Prof. Luca Pes’ course “Italian Contemporary History in Films”
Directed by Julien Duvivier Starring Fernandel and Gino Cervi
Genres comedy Release date 1952 (Italy)
Running time 109 minutes Languages Italian
The film is set in Brescello, a small village in the center of Italy, where the earth is hard and life miserly, and is based on the novel written by Giovannino Guareschi.
The movie depicts the eternal rivalry between the priest Don Camillo and the communist town’s major, Giuseppe Bottazzi, to be the head of the community. If in secret they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it divided the country. Laughs, gags and a touch of melancholy…
Its success led to producing sequels, creating a saga for Don Camillo’s character.
It is part of the list of the 100 Italian films to be saved, because of its influence in changing the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978.