The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978)

I got myself a fantastic birthday present yesterday: I purchased a copy of the newly-released Criterion Collection DVD of director Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs.  I first saw this movie a few short weeks ago, and I can say, without a hint of exaggeration, that this film has almost instantaneously rocketed near the top of the list of my favorite films of all time.  And I’ve watched A LOT of movies!

From the back of the slipcase of the 2016 Criterion Collection DVD, released yesterday, 2/14/17:

“A sensual immersion in late nineteenth-century Italian peasant life, Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs focuses on four families working for one landowner on an estate in the province of Bergamo.  Filming on an abandoned farm, Olmi adapted neorealist techniques to tell his story, enlisting local people to live as their ancestors had and speak 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 lovingly evokes an existence very close to nature, celebrating its beauty, humor, and simplicity but also acknowledging the feudal cruelty that governs it.”

This movie is over three hours long, but I was never bored watching it.  Apparently, it was originally produced as a three-part miniseries for Italian television.  The program was entered as a film at the prestigious Canne Film Festival inn 1978, and won the Palme d’Or, the highest award granted a film at the festival.  It was a just reward, and the film still stands the test of time almost four decades later.

Director Ermanno Olmi was motivated to create a picture of life during the time of his grandmother, who hailed from the Italian province of Lombardy.  At the time this film was made, the way of life presented had just about died out.  Olmi employed real farmers from the region in his film roles, given the feel of a documentary, you-are-there feel to scenes.  He also had them speak their lines in the local dialect of Burgamasque, necessitating subtitles even for native Italian viewers.  He came across the farm (dilapidated but still feasible) used in most of the movie almost by accient (he would say by providence) during a fog-shrouded drive scouting locations.

Olmi handled both the cinematography and editing of the film.  He spent years in development, writing the script, and creating the plot.  He used an alternative to the traditional Kodak color film to give the movie a different look that films usually shot in a warmer climate.  There’s not much to said plot, but we really get a great sense of this near-forgotten world Olmi paints like on a canvas for us, with his camera lens.

The title refers to an incident pertaining to one of the four families followed during the course of events of the movie.  A young peasant boy named Minek (Omar Brignoli) is given an extraordinary opportunity for a peasant child of that time: he is allowed to enroll in a local school, instead of having to go to work for his family.  Unfortunately, one day on the way walking the long four miles home from school, one of his wooden shoes (clogs) unexpectedly breaks beyond repair, and he is late arriving home.  His father, who does not own any appropriate shoe wood of his own for making shoes, takes it upon himself to cut down a tree owned by the wealthy landowner for whom he works and rents his home and livestock.  This fateful action taken by the father, leads to disastrous results.

Director Olmi was and is a devout Catholic, and his faith definitely shines through and pervades this movie’s many scenes.  The tenant farmer protagonists are a deeply religious folk: they huddle together to pray the rosary late at night as the last thing they do, before going to bed; the local parish priest, Father Carlo, is the individual that encourages young Minek’s father to send his bright son to school, despite the sacrifice for the family; it is not uncommon throughout the movie to see various characters praying for the divine intercession of the Lord in every crisis or near-crisis they face; two major characters are married in a Catholic religious ceremony, and spend their honeymoon in a convent in Milan as the guests of a Sister that is a family relative; and so on.

Director Olmi, unlike fellow directors of Italian Neorealism era, came up from actual peasant stock, and was not well-to-do like many of these fellow directors.  Many Italian Neorealist then and now describe themselves as Marxists.  Olmi, as well, apparently has described himself as such, but there is a difference with him, in that he eschews the atheism and revolutionaries traditionally closely associated with Marxism. 

Olmi was criticized by critics on the left at the time his film premiered.  These critics felt that the peasants portrayed in his films passively accepted their fate, instead of rising up and attempting to overthrow their oppressors.  The film 1900, directed by an Italian Neorealist contemporary of Olmi, Bernardo Bertolucci, premiered a short two years before The Tree of Wooden Clogs and explored similar themes of the peasant vs. patrician class struggle.  In Bertolucci’s film, which is far more dramatic and eventful, the struggle is more framed in a violent revolutionary context.

In a 2008 Interview located on the DVD, Olmi addresses his critics directly.  He claims that they failed to realize that, whilst in their comfortable ivory towers, these intellectual critics can complain all they want about the peasants not rising up, as they are not looking at the situation from the peasant’s perspective at the time.  No doubt if the peasants did rise up and revolt after being deprived, they would risk being killed, and lose what they had anyway.  The best the peasants can do is to pray for justice, which they indeed do.   

Writer Deborah Young, in an essay included with the DVD entitled “Sacred Realism,” sees The Tree of Wooden Clogs as the film that resonates more with audiences in terms of sympathy over the peasant’s plight.  She also notes this important difference between the two films:

“Whereas Bertolucci gives his padroni the familar face of Robert De Niro and Dominique Sanda, in Tree we barely glipse the man who holds the power of life and death over these children of the earth.  Olmi’s only comment on the landowner and his family is to associate them with the well-heeled culture of opera and chamber music. The peasants, instead, are identified with the sublime music of Johann Sebastian Bach, heard repeatedly on the soundtrack, until Bach’s baroque harmonies provide a spiritual metaphor akin to the ones in the films of Ingmar Bergman and Robert Bresson, a sort of divine blessing from above.”

 

On a personal note, a lost a good friend last week, Joseph Abraham.  He was a leader the guiding force behind the Catholic young adult group I’ve been involved with over the past several years.  Like me, he was a cinephile, and had an appetite for faith-based films in particular.  I do not know if he had seen The Tree of Wooden Clogs before his death, but I have no doubt he would have loved it.  If you're a person of faith, or even if you are not, do yourself a favor and watch this movie.  You'll be glad you did.

 

Father Brown and The Hammer of God. Part Two (Warning-Spoilers)

In 2013, BBC One began airing episodes of a new television adaptation of Father Brown.  According to Wikipedia, these episodes are loosely inspired on G.K. Chesterton’s works, primarily using new stories written for the series.  The show was developed by writers  Rachel  Flowerday  and Tahsin Guner.  Actor Mark Williams portrays the title role.

Williams had been primarily known for playing Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter films.  He also played Brian Williams in the BBC series Doctor Who, and Olaf Petersen in the British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf.

In my opinion, Williams possesses the necessary roundness of face and body to portray Chesterton’s wily detective.   Williams as an actor is also totally believable as deceptively intelligent and shrewd, just like his character as written by Chesterton.  If he has any shortcomings, it is that he is…well…perhaps not short enough?  I pictured Father Brown as much shorter than Williams, who is about average height.

The production values of the 2013 BBC One tv series are leaps and bounds above what the 1974 ITV series adaptation of Father Brown was able to bring to the table back then.  The 1974 series would shift from realistic videotape for interior shots, to grainy film for exteriors.  This was apparently common practice for British tv shows in the 1970s, in order to save money.   I can recall watching early Doctor Who episodes on PBS from the 70s as a kid, where they did the same thing.  It was and is particularly disorienting and jarring to watch the transition from film to tv within a single episode.   This is not a problem in the 2013 series-everything is filmed the same way, interior and outdoor shots, for some much-appreciated consistency.

Another huge difference between the Father Brown short stories and the 1974 and 2013 tv versions is the time period and settings.  The short stories of Chesterton’s detective took place in the decades before and after World War I, and took Father Brown all around the globe-England, America, etc.  The 1974 series confined Father Brown to the United Kingdom in the 1920s.  The 2013 series confines Brown even more geographically, to the countryside region of the Cotswolds in South Central England, during the post-World War II 1950s.

This new 2013 series adds several regular characters to Father Brown’s usual acquaintances not seen in either the short stories or the 1974 series, including a parish secretary, housekeeper, and local socialite (all female.) 

The adaption of The Hammer of God for the BBC series strays quite a bit from the original short story and the 1974 version.  There’s a subplot involving blackmail, a homosexual relationship, and a key omission of a certain character’s religious faith.  There’s also an underground gambling circuit, a new sycophant character in place of Mad Joe, and an issue with an Anglican Church’s clock tower.  And there’s heaps more melodrama and action.

These new changes will appeal to modern audiences, no doubt.  If you are a fan of say, the BBC series Sherlock, you’ll probably prefer this new series.  If you would like to watch a series with more similarities to the original short stories by Chesterton, the 1974 series will appeal more to you.

Father Brown and The Hammer of God. Part One (Warning-Spoilers)

Today, I’m going to write my first blog post on a television series.  Specifically, two different television adaptations of the same subject, author G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mystery story The Hammer of God.  I will first give a short introduction to G.K. Chesterton, his Father Brown character, and the short story itself.  Then, I’ll compare and contrast the two different television adaptations of the same story, in two separate Blog postings. This is Part One.   

Here’s a short biography of G.K. Chesterton from Biography.com:

G.K. Chesterton was born on May 29, 1874 in London. He was known for writing academic commentary, poetry and short stories. His interest in theology and conversion to Catholicism led him to write religious fiction. In 1908, he wrote the novel The Man Who Was Thursday. His most popular work was a detective series featuring a sleuth named Father Brown. He died in 1936.

Here’s an interpretation I’ve found of the Father Brown literary character, the focus of Chesterton’s Father Brown stories.  From Wikipedia:

Father Brown was a vehicle for conveying Chesterton's view of the world and, of all of his characters, is perhaps closest to Chesterton's own point of view, or at least the effect of his point of view. Father Brown solves his crimes through a strict reasoning process more concerned with spiritual and philosophic truths than with scientific details, making him an almost equal counterbalance with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, whose stories Chesterton read.  However, the Father Brown series commenced before Chesterton's own conversion to Roman Catholicism.

Another interpretation of the character Father Brown, this time from the unlikely point of view of an Italian Marxist theorist, Antonio Gramsci.  Gramsci notes his preference of detective (Brown vs. Holmes) unequivocally.  Also from Wikipedia:

Father Brown is the Catholic priest who through the refined psychological experiences offered by confession and by the persistent activity of the fathers' moral casuistry, though not neglecting science and experimentation, but relying especially on deduction and introspection, totally defeats Sherlock Holmes, makes him look like a pretentious little boy, shows up his narrowness and pettiness.  Moreover, Chesterton is a great artist while Conan Doyle was a mediocre writer, even though he was knighted for literary merit; thus in Chesterton there is a stylistic gap between the content, the detective story plot, and the form, and therefore a subtle irony with regard to the subject being dealt with, which renders these stories so delicious.

 

Here’s the summary (warning-spoilers) of G.K. Chesterton’s Hammer of God short story, courtesy of enotes.com:

The Reverend Wilfred Bohun is pleading with his wanton brother, the colonel, to leave the blacksmith’s wife alone while the blacksmith is away. Angry at his brother’s unrepentant lust, the curate warns him that God may strike him dead and runs into the old Gothic church to pray. Half an hour later, the village cobbler enters the church to tell the curate that his brother is dead. They run out to find Colonel Bohun’s corpse stretched out in the courtyard of the smithy, his head smashed in by a small hammer. The local police inspector and doctor are already trying to reconstruct the crime. At first it seems obvious: The blow was so powerful, smashing even the colonel’s metal helmet, that only the smith could have delivered it—and the smith, indignantly aware of the colonel’s trifling with his wife, had ample motive. The smith, however, is soon cleared by unimpeachable witnesses who place him in the next town at the time of the crime.

The hammer’s smallness moves the doctor to guess that the smith’s wife killed the colonel. This theory is discarded, however, because the fatal blow was too powerful for her to have dealt. The curate suggests that the village idiot, Mad Joe, might be capable of such a blow. He recalls seeing Mad Joe, the smith’s nephew, praying in the chapel just before the murder, and seeing his brother, the colonel, mercilessly teasing the poor soul as he left the chapel.

The only one who does not seem content with the curate’s solution to the mystery is Father Brown, who suddenly becomes noticeable in the crowd. When he is alone with Reverend Bohun in the spire of the church, he offers his own solution to the mystery: The murderer is Bohun himself, and the mysterious force that crushed his brother’s metal helmet with such a small hammer is a natural one: gravity. Having picked up a hammer while pleading with the colonel at the smithy, Bohun threw it from the top of the belfry onto his brother’s head, the acceleration giving the tiny tool tremendous force. Father Brown swears that he will not reveal Bohun’s secret but urges him to give himself up, which the curate does immediately.

In 1974 the British tv network ITV aired 13 episodes of Father Brown, an adaptation starring Kenneth Moore in the title role.  I know Moore primarily as the “Ghost of Christmas Present” from the 1970 film musical Scrooge, which starred Albert Finney in the title role. Moore is physically on the short side, and stocky of build, similar to how he is described in Chesterton’s stories; conversely, not quite as “round,” either in face and build, as described in the stories.  American audiences were exposed to the series as it was broadcast for the tv show Mystery! on PBS over the years.

The Hammer of God story was adapted for ITV in 1974 by director Robert Tronson and writer Hugh Leonard (based on Chesterton’s original work.)  Among others, this episode co-Stars Kenneth Moore as Father Brown, Graham Crowden as Colonel James Bohun, William Russel as Reverend Wilfred Bohun, Geraldine Moffat as Elizabeth Barnes, John Forgeham as Simeon Barnes, and Alun Armstrong as Joe. 

I would have say this adaptation follows extremely closely to the original short story, which is not a long story to begin with.  It is quite understandable that certain details omitted from the original story are elucidated in this tv production.  For example, we are shown Colonel James Bohun and Elizabeth Barnes getting out of bed and just about finished dressing after an inferred illicit tryst, which must have been quite racy for tv at this time (1974.)

As far as the casting other than Moore (who is quite good in every episode of the series) the standout for me in this cast was Graham Crowden as Colonel James Bohen.  Crowden does a magnificent job of playing the boorish, lustful aristocrat Colonel Bohun.  He looks quite the part as Chesterton described: him, tall, imposing, with his blond mustaches and samurai-like armored green hat.

I like how religion takes the spotlight in this episode, and the harsh contrasts between the faiths.  There is of course, the faith of Father Brown, Roman Catholicism (here referred to as a “Papist” by another character, John Forgeham.)  Then there is the faith of Reverend Wilfred Bohun (Church of England-a church that, it is implied by Brown, acquired all the former old Catholic churches during its growth and development.)  Lastly, there is Scotsman John Forgeham’s Presbyterian faith (here portrayed as fire-and-brimstone, concerned with “revival meetings” and the like.)

In Part Two of this blog post, I will describe the recent BBC TV adaptation of the Father Brown story, comparing it to the 1974 ITV production.

Il Posto (1961, Italy)

Il Posto (1961)


 


The very first film I intend to discuss in my second official blog post is the 1961 Italian film, Il Posto (The Sound of Trumpets).


 


I came around to watching this film in a roundabout way.  The picture's director, Ermmano Olmi, is cited by a Catholic Christian painter/writer I admire (Michael D. O'Brien, of Father Elijah fame.)  O'Brien touts Olmi as a filmmaker worth seeking out.  Since it was O'Brien's writings that led me to discover one of my all-time favorite directors, Andrei Tarkovsky, I knew that I had to look up the works of this Olmi guy.  I am embarrassed to say that I was, until recently, completely ignorant of director Olmi's background and work.  So, I set out to do some research.


 


According to IMDB, the indispensible movie database:


 

Ermanno Olmi was born July 24, 1931 in Triviglio, Lombardy, Italy.

 

His trademarks include long, slow takes; social commentary; passionate humanism; and using non-actors in authentic locations.

 

Olmi has been married to his wife Loredana Detto (who co-stars in Il Posto) since 1963.  They have three children.

 


Like any internet-saavy blogger of today, I found some additional background on the director on his Wikipedia page:


 

Olmi's films fit into the artistic mold of Italian neorealism, though Olmi would argue (and does argue, in an interview found on the Criterion Edition DVD of his 1961 film, Il Posto) that this is the artistic tradition he is responding against because, he claimed, he used non-actors in authentic locations whereas neorealism used professional actors. However, many neorealist directors also used non-professional actors for secondary and sometimes even primary roles. His films, like most of those considered to be products of the neorealist movement, are shot in long, slow takes, and generally contain some sort of social commentary, though rarely do the neorealists wear their political opinions on their sleeves. Another film was I fidanzati.

Perhaps his best known film is The Tree of Wooden Clogs (L'Albero degli zoccoli), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. In 1983 his film Walking, Walking was screened out of competition at Cannes. In 1988, his La leggenda del santo bevitore (The Legend of the Holy Drinker), based on the novel by Joseph Roth and starring Rutger Hauer, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival as well as a David di Donatello award.

His The Profession of Arms (Il mestiere delle armi) also won a David di Donatello award.

In 2008 he received the Honorary Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

An impressive resume.  What it doesn’t say on his IMDB page or Wikipedia biography, is that Olmi is a devout Roman Catholic director.  Intriguing, to say the least.


 


Enter author Deborah Young, who wrote a piece for Film Comment magazine back in March/April of 2001 that I uncovered .  She had this to say regarding Olmi’s faith:


 

            It's strange that so few directors in Italy are religious, at least in the sense that their films are imbued with signs of their faith. Though they share real estate with the Vatican—or maybe because of its very proximity, on the theory that familiarity breeds contempt—Italian filmmakers are much better known for political militancy than religious fervor. Among the few exceptions are Roberto Rossellini and, in a complex way, Pier Paolo Pasolini. And most emphatically, Ermanno Olmi.

 


Wow, so there you go, I thought...I have definitely have got to watch this guy’s stuff!


 


I Googled a synopsis of the film.  Here’s what Google came up with:


           

With his family mired in financial troubles, Domenico (Sandro Panseri) moves to Milan, Italy, from his small town to get a job in lieu of furthering his education. A lack of options forces him to take a position as a messenger at a big company, where he hopes to receive a promotion soon. There, Domenico meets Antonietta (Loredana Detto), a young woman in a similar situation as himself. The two form a tentative relationship, but the soulless nature of their jobs threatens to keep them apart.

I rented a copy of Il Posto from my local library system.  Luckily, the movie got the full Criterion Collection treatment a few years back, which meant a full digital restoration.  The movie looks beautiful, like the day it was made, with a crisp, quality picture.  Scratches and other marks to the film’s original negative have been for the most part, erradicated, as is apparent in the new digital transfer.


 


This movie was filmed in black and white, and it has English subtitles for non-Italian speakers.  Watching a film that is not in color, and not in the native language of the people that are viewing it, can be overlooked challenges for a modern audience of a classic film.  My attention was adequately held with a limited ammount of districtions, although yes, as the IMDB description of Olmi's films indicated, the film does unfold slowly, which can try one’s patience when used to the fast pace of many Hollywood studio films of today.


 


Sandro Panseri, who plays Domenico, is completely convincing in his role.  I had no trouble imaging this young man as little different from the character he portrays.  Loredana Detto is also perfectly cast as the young maiden he forms a cute little romance with- it’s easy to see how Domenico falls for her character of Antoinetta.


 


Neither Panseri nor Detto had much professional acting experience, as is true with most of those cast in this movie.  It hardly shows.  And at a time when many Hollywood productions used lavish, expensive movie sets with highly-paid, established stars (think Cleopatra, Liz Taylor/Richard Burton, 1960) this movie uses real-life locations, the interiors of actual homes, real interiors of office buildings, real outside city streets, real interiors of trains, etc.  The results are almost documentary-like in feeling.


 


So where does the religious faith of the director come into play with this movie?  Well, for me, I think this is displayed with regard to the portrayal of the idea that every human life has dignity, a concept that can be traced back to the earliest Christians.  Sometimes in modern society, we tend to lose sight of this key concept.  In the march toward "progress," we lose some of our dignity.  How in the world this can happen, is a major theme illustrated in Il Posto.


 


At the time in history that Il Posto is set (post-WWII), Italy is in the mist of an industrialization boom.  Farmers and other agriculturalists are being drawn from the countryside to work in the cities (in this film’s case, Milan.) But these agriculturalists lose something of themselves with this corporatization, whatever they think they might be gaining. 


 


What these individuals lose in industrilized society is their past freedom.  They are shunted into a dreary job in a dark building where one is stuffed into a room full of other corporate “lifers.”  Sure, at this time in history in this place, one may have a job for life, once you go through all the deameaning tests and hoops to get the job in the first place (which are displayed with particular clarity in the movie.)  Get up at the crack of dawn, commute farrrrr into the city, work all day, return home after a looooong commute back to the countryside late at night. And repeat.  Week after week.  You end up like one particular character, a recent retiree, whose family life was supplanted by a new family, that of the corporation.  Social occasions for him, like all his co-workers, revolve around holidays and parties, dances, etc spent with others working for the company.  After retirement, his life is so tied into that corporate culture, that he spends his retitrement days coming back to visit his old co-workers on consecutive visits!


 


I came away with the notion that the main protagonist of Dominico, a young man in search of a better living to help his family, is fated to end up much like that retiree.  Thrust from his familiar country surroundings into the forboding city, he is initially in awe and wonder of this new landscape, new clothes, new (potential) love interests, new social interests, etc.  But it all too easily will become old-hat before long, and he will be sucked into the repetition of a life lived like a hamster on a treadmill.


 


Not to say that the film is all doom-and-gloom.  Far from it!  There are ample times we appreciate the wonders of the world through the director’s camera lens.  A “first date” of sorts, between Domenico and Antoinette, is particularly affecting in it’s sponteneity.  We feel their nervousness sharing a quick coffee in a downtown cafe.  Before they've barely even realized it, they’re sprinting to work in excitement, over and through buildings being constructed, hoping their lunch hour isn't over, to avoid being late.  Later, we feel sorry for Domenico when he is alone, stood up at a corporate party/dance. But soon, we see him jolted out of his solitary state, and hoisted (reluctantly, at first) into drunken revelry and bacchanalia with his other co-workers (notably a middle-aged woman old enough to be his mother.) Plenty of music and dancing and in a sea of wine-induced frivolity!  And so on.


 


I believe I’ve found a new favorite film in Il Posto, and a new favorite director in Ermanno Olmi.  The man has been very active in cinema through the years, even up to the ripe old age of 83 (!), when his most recent film was released.  I look foward to exploring the rest of his ouvre very soon.


 

Introduction

Last year, a friend of mine, Natalie M. Murray, gave me the idea to start a movie blog, and to approach said blog from my own faith-based (in my case, Catholic Christian) perspective.  I must admit, I was intrigued by the idea.  I love watching, talking about, and writing about movies.  And, I always strive to maintain my faith as the center focus of my life, particularly in recent years. “Why not combine the two interest?” I said.
Easier said than done. I dragged my feet for several months. I knew I had something to say, but I just wasn’t sure how I wanted to go about saying it. There are hundreds of thousands of movie blogs out there.  Accordingly, there are hundreds of blogs out there that approach movies from a particular angle. How do I make mine different, and stand out from the crowd?
I kind of knew what I didn’t want to do.  I didn’t want to write a blog composed of standard movie reviews. There are already plenty of these.  And I didn’t want to write a blog where I tabulate how many curse words there are in a film, or objectionable material, as a guide for the viewer-there are plenty of those blogs out there like this as well.
My idea would be to watch a particular film, after which I would write about my rational for wanting to view that particular movie in the first place. I would write down whatever my preconceived notions of the film were before I saw it, how I felt while watching it, and how I felt afterwards.  My own faith-based lens would unavoidably be reflected in the end product.  I would provide a basic outline and background on the film.  And, I'd devote an inordinate amount of time to the director of the movie.
Nowadays, television shows rival movies in terms of viewership-some might say current television surpasses film in quality in many ways. So I decided that perhaps I would expand my horizons a bit, and include television series in the mix-either whole series, or individual seasons, or individual episodes.
It should also be apparent that I planned on approaching what I write about from my own biased generational perspective.  I was born in the 1970s, grew up primarily in the 1980s and 1990s, and matured into adulthood from the late 90s-onward.
This is all very new to me in terms of endeavors, so bear with me if it is rough-going to read at first. I have always enjoyed commenting on movies on social media, particularly facebook-either in posts, or in the notes section.  I see this blog as a natural extension of this desire.
Even if you're not a person of faith, or a person from a different faith tradition, I think you'll appreciate what I have to say. 
Lastly, I welcome your (constructive) comments and suggestions.  Thanks for reading!