Customer Reviews

Padre Padrone

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

a true story, about living under unbelievable paternal cruelty. the landscape must be beutiful, but this dvd transfer manages to obscure all that. this is the type of product you get when vulgar and dishonest people are involved in its making; this becomes more apparent when it involve the production of art-related materials, where ultimate crftmanship is required. I hope that a remastered version well be published sometimes in the future. avoid this dvd and all Fox Lorber dvd.

Here is a landmark film of the seventies , a film with a great dramatic intensity , it has its roots in neo-realism yet so beautiful and lyrical. The 5 stars are for Paolo and Vittorio Taviani , Omero Antonuti and the rest of the crew. For Fox Lorber a zero on a transfer job so poorly done , the VHS tape plays better; they did the same with "Ran" , by Kurosawa . Let us hope someone will hear our voices screaming bloody murder , and hoping for a decent digital transfer on these and similar "butchered" masterpieces.

No matter how preserving, redemptive, or moving, this 1977 Cannes Festival winner comes across, it has it's weird moments. Padre Padrone is translated to Father, the Boss. The story encompasses abuse, brutality, bestiality, religion, oppression, etc. The directors, the Taviani brothers, are intent at depicting this barbaric existence.

Based on the autobiographical story of Gavino Ledda, an illiterate sheepherder who escaped his father's rule, joined the military, was self-taught and became professor of linguistics.

Gavino is hauled away from school at the age of 7 by his father who needs his son to watch the sheep, and that his education will come at 18 years of age. He orders the boy to live in the fields day and night. We see the abusive treatment his father imposes and we are privy to some sickening bestiality moments (by the younger children who are also sheepherders).

But the childhood scenes are quickly relayed to Gavino years later, as a young man. And there are more strange interactions within his family. Too many scenes are left to your imagination as to what is happening or we are left with little clue as to why.

When he escapes life as a sheepherder, Gavino joins the military. It is here that his speech doesn't compare to the others he becomes self-educated in phonetics and he becomes a radio operator, I believe it is. Then, he goes back home to the village and confronts his father. Here, we get a better understanding of the conflict to come. This review is from the videotape.

Rizzo

There's no shortage of grit and unpleasantness in Padre Padrone, the kind of film you really couldn't make today - violent child beatings, animals beaten, killed or worse on screen (I really wasn't expecting the montage of donkey and chicken molesting) and a distinct lack of any sentimentality. But the Taviani Brothers' film is still one of the best I've seen this year, turning what could easily have been an exercise in miserablism into a remarkable and occasionally anarchic but always imaginative piece of pure filmmaking. From its great opening, where the real Gavino hands the actor playing his father the stick he will use to beat him as a child, there's an intelligent audacity that manifests itself in a world where animals and even music have voices if you know how to listen: the battle of wills between Gavino and a goat played out in voice over, or the voice overs of the school children whose laughter at Gavino's fate turns to horror as they realize they are next are just two great examples. Some shots manage to be strangely beautiful in spite of their context or even, odd as it sounds, their visual quality - the tracking shot of leaving the village, the long take of the father hurrying home to kill his son. The film also has a superlative use of sound, creating a sense of place out of the sounds as much of the sights in Gavino's first night in the pasture.

The two hours fly by, but burn themelves into your memory. It's just a shame that Fox Lorber's DVD is such poor quality.

Ignore Maltin. He's out of his league when it comes to reviewing movies of any substance or ambition. This is an unbelievably powerful story of an illiterate shepherd who survives a brutal upbringing through the power of education. It's a movie about redemption through the written and spoken word. It's as stylistically audacious as anything Scorsese ever made. It's bawdy, beautifully acted, terrifying and whimsical. There's nothing quite like it, except maybe the Taviani Brothers' other movies (The Meadow, Kaos, Good Morning, Babylon). It's one of my favorites.

Maltin has clearly just not understood the first thing about this, and should stick to Hollywood blockbusters. This is a fantastic movie about the power that a father holds over his son due to his limiting the son's education and ability to communicate. The fact that Gavino Ledda went on to become a linguist shows the effect that his father had, as well as his determination to overcome the limitations set upon him. And when you're done seeing this, track down any other Taviani film you can, especially Notte di San Lorenzo, perhaps movie made about fascism.

This is a film that haunts me (especially the first part) so much that for years I couldn't bring myself to write a review on. And yet the look of the small boy in the sleeve brings back so much vivid memories: the same sort of impact of the War Photo showing a shocked, naked small Asian girl (aged 5 or 6?) on the run, crying, taking flee on her own from a bomb upon Japanese invasion... It doesn't have to show you the actual act of violence or brutality. His helplessness in the vastness of the desolate mountainous slopes is just omnipotent and I still can't bring myself to go back to it. It is almost as shocking as a Georgian film from Russia in B/W that I had seen decades ago. One star taken off for its bitter sadness, for it weighs so heavy in your heart...

This is a true story about an Italian author born in Sardinia who developed his potential by sheer determination against very great odds as a child. It is an inspriring salute to the strength of the human spirit. One scene in particular is the most moving I have ever witnessed in cinema.

Seeing the film again after over 20 years rekindled all my great memories and reinforced my long-held opinions of it. I only wished that the film had been made using today's superior cinematography and production standards, without however changing the story or style.

This is a sad and haunting story which focuses in the iliterate Sardinian boy who is brutalized by his father .
Nevertheless this boy will make the grade and become a master Greek and Latin .
If you look back your memory about the disturbing and distorted relationship father and son , there have been just a few who are really winner .
In the thirties , Maedchen in uniform maintains a surprise for you in this girl school with authority and lesbianism . In the forties there is an emblematic issue of Roberto Roselini: Germany anno zero and the boy with the green hair (Joseph Losey) .In the fifties , Pather Panchalli , Jeux interdits (Rene Clement), Rebel without a cause and Giant . In the sixties the sweet bird of youth and the young Torless (Scholondorff) ; in the seventies the Chinese roulette (Fassbinder), Cria cuervos (Saura) .
But it is really during the eighties when this theme will rise in importance . In the nineties the unbeatable Character , Sleepers and Celebration .
This film won The Cannes Festival and that is not just a cumpliment.
The Tavianni brothers developed a realist and pàinful portrait revealing without scruples all the fear and way of living in a peasant family .
The hard times and the fact of living under a same roof but without being a home .
The school works out as a merciless institution where the power is dressed of education ; and the hidden and perverse instincts grow up and will transform in real nightmares for the not so gifted children .
The Tavianni brothers have given new stories and revitalized the italian neo realism . His fundamental filmography include besides, the night of the shooting stars and Caos (my special favorites ) , Good morning Babylon and the Sun even night (Il sole anche di notte)
Watch that jewel film . A triumph of the italian cinema .

A great movie full of deep intense moments,fomented by the nasty character of Abramo,the possessive and controlling father of a young Gavino who too soon discovers what's the real life is made of.Filmed in the deeper side of an almost ancient and beautiful Sardinia countryside this film will move you deeply.
The relations between father and son is taken to a new level as rarely have been documented on celluloid.Like it or not this movie will move you and will touch all the right buttons in the rediscovery of any parental relationship.
The only minor point is the bad translation of the original to DVD format.