Film Review - "The Garden Of The Finzi Continis"

Vittorio de Sica, known commonly for The Bicycle Thief and other neo-realist classics of the 40s and 50s also made this lesser known, yet exquisite film in the 70s. It has the ambience of a dream. In the NYT review of the time:

"The garden of the Finzi Continis, owned by a rich, intellectual Jewish-Italian family, is a sylvan sanctuary in the ducal town of Ferrara in 1938. Outside its walls, the good gentile citizens of Ferrara parade Fascist banners and slogans and prepare for war, but these things are barely acknowledged by the Finzi Continis, who have their gardens and woods, a huge main house, a smaller but still imposing summer lodge, and a private tennis court.

When the tennis club, observing Mussolini's new anti-Semitic laws, drops the Finzi Continis from its rolls, Micol Finzi Contini (Dominique Sanda) and her brother, Alberto (Helmut Berger), make a tentative gesture towards ending their aristocratic isolation. They invite friends—gentiles as well as Jewish—into their sanctuary to play tennis on long, lovely, hot summer afternoons. Micol is paid romantic court by Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio), the narrator of the film, a nice young Jewish boy, but she has midnight assignations with Malnate, a gentile whom she can never marry.

There are no commitments in such liaisons, and although Micol and Alberto are fond of their friends, they are different from them, even from their Jewish friends. They are aware of something that is apparent to no one else. They are dying but will do nothing about it................."

Really hope you can get your hands on this one.