Product Details

• Actors: Diego Abatantuono, Claudio Bigagli, Giuseppe Cederna, Claudio Bisio, Gigio Alberti
• Directors: Gabriele Salvatores
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English, Greek, Italian, Turkish
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Walt Disney Video
• VHS Release Date: January 14, 2003
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 630267672X
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,239 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #2 in	Video > Comedy > Military & War
  #3 in	Video > Art House & International > European Cinema > Italy > Comedy
  #13 in	Video > Military & War > World War II

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This 1991 comedy by Gabriele Salvatores was knocked for not being deep enough, but it is what it is, and it's actually an easygoing, sunny movie about eight Italian soldiers who manage to strand themselves on a tiny Greek island paradise during World War II. The sort of mutts who would shoot a donkey for not knowing the proper password, these clumsy warriors become a comic variation on the Lotus Eaters of myth, their fighting spirit evaporated in the midst of so much beauty and sexual availability among the local women. There are also sundry opportunities for the men to find another purpose for their lives (one particularly artistic fellow works on the restoration of a church, for example). Amid the sometimes coarse jokes and gratuitous nudity, there are subtle themes about the contrast between what men are truly like in their natural state versus what they are like as killers. (The Thin Red Line this isn't, but Salvatores does, in his own way, touch on some of the same themes.) Watch this one on a cold winter's day and vicariously enjoy the tans as well as the antiwar sentiment. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great movie telling a story of forgotten soldiers, April 14, 2004

By	Franz L Kessler (Houston, TX, USA) - See all my reviews

Every movie, like life itself, has a beginning and an ending. Comparing the beginning and the ending tells a lot about a movie. The opening picture in Mediterraneo shows a group of people, with little and common, shuffled together by fate. The ending shows a group of friends, who have learnt to share their lives.

It is 1941, and a fierce battle is raging through the eastern part of the Mediterranean, where Italian troops are battling British forces for the control of Islands, such as it happened in similar ways between American troops and the Japanese in the Pacific theatre.

On this background, an Italian platoon is sent to the tiny island of Kastellorizo, the southernmost island of the Dodekanesos, huddled against the Turkish coastline. The cruiser, that brought them to the Island, is sunk the same day, and their radio equipment fails. The soldiers gradually make contact with the Islanders. As the war progresses the soldiers and their little island are forgotten by the war-faring parties.

Step-by-step they find new lives. Some become goat herders, fishermen, while others fall in love with the village prostitute. The commanding lieutenant discovers his talent for fresco painting, and restores the island's church, whilst his eleven members of the platoon serve as models for the followers of Jesus and other saints.

In this movie, the soldiers collectively forget about their identity, and become part of the islander community. However, as the war ends, the island's male abducted population returns to reclaim their wives.

Reluctantly, the Italians leave the island. Only one of them hides in a barrel, after having married the village's prostitute.

This movie is not only highly entertaining. It plays in a rarely portrayed theatre of the WWII.
It portrays the development of human society in the context of compassion and friendship.

I highly recommend this movie to spectators interested in psychology, the absurdity of life, and human development.

Franz L. Kessler www.authorsden.com/franzkessler

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For Silvana, August 3, 2000

By	Mr. Cairene (Cairo, Egypt) - See all my reviews

An eight man battalion is sent by the Italian army to secure a strategically unimportant Greek island. When we first meet them they are arguing about anything and everything. The first ten minutes of Mediterraneo seem like a photograhped play, complete with oddball character going head to head with each other in small, darkly lit sets. It is only when these characters meet the locals that the film blossoms into a sunny, lyrical and strangely uplifiting experience.

Most reviews have described it as a comedy, since Mediterraneo offers us a soldier who goes to war with a donkey called Silvana, an artistic battalion leader who would rather paint a cathedral then display any kind of leadership and a loud sargent trying to hypnotise his fellow soldiers in a soccer game, I would agree that it is a very funny film. But its more then that. With the help of cinematographer Italo Petriccione, director Salvatores's film is like a whimisical dream, a rose tinted memory. He seems aware that the virginal romantic soldier and the prostitute with a heart of gold are cliches, but in context of this picturesque little poem their romance made me inexplicably and ridiculously happy.

There is something enormously endearing about the Italian language. Maybe its the way the words stretch out, "Medeeteryaano", that makes it seem so passionate. My Italian is about as good as Roberto Benigni's English, but listening to the language spoken by its native speakers is always a pleasure. It just seems less cynical.

The film made me believe that these men could forget themselves for three years in the spiritual and sensual paradise they were sent to conquer. Underscored with some incredibly beautiful bazouki music, Mediterraneo possesses a giddy indescribable charm.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Movie, September 4, 2001

By A Customer

Just one quick thought: please release this title on DVD. Cinema Paradiso has been released, Il Postino has been released, now this movie should be released. It easily holds its own when compared to these 2 movies. Simply delightful. The acting, the plot, the scenery, easily give this movie a five-star rating. Makes you want to visit the Greek island where the movie was shot and live the experience of "la dolce vità" portrayed in this movie. This film shows you how, even in the thick of war, enemies are more alike then different. We are all linked by the same human spirit.
I await impatiently for the DVD version.