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Padre Padrone - Wikipedia

Padre Padrone - Wikipedia


Padre Padrone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Padre Padrone
Theatrical release poster
Directed byPaolo Taviani
Vittorio Taviani
Written byStory:
Gavino Ledda
Screenplay:
Paolo Taviani
Vittorio Taviani
Produced byGiuliani G. De Negri
StarringOmero Antonutti
CinematographyMario Masini
Edited byRoberto Perpignani
Music byEgisto Macchi
Distributed byRadiotelevisione Italiana
Cinema 5 Distributing (USA)
Artificial Eye (UK)
Release dates
June 1977
(Berlinale)
December 23, 1977
(New York Film Festival)
Running time
114 minutes
CountryItaly
LanguagesItalian
Sardinian
Latin

Padre Padrone is a 1977 Italian film directed by Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani. The Tavianis used both professional and non-professional actors from the Sardinian countryside.[1] 

The title (pronounced [ˈpaːdre pa'drone]) literally means "Father Master";[2] it has been translated as My Father, My Master[3] or Father and Master.[4][5]

The drama was originally filmed by the Taviani brothers for Italian television but won the 1977 Palme d'Or prize at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival.[6][7]

The film depicts a Sardinian shepherd who is terrorized by his domineering father and tries to escape by educating himself. 

He eventually becomes a celebrated linguist. The drama is based on an autobiographical book of the same title by Gavino Ledda.

In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."[8]

Plot[edit]

The film opens in a documentary style at the elementary school in Siligo, where six-year-old Gavino (Saverio Marconi) is attending. His tyrannical peasant father (Omero Antonutti) barges in and announces to the teacher and the students that Gavino must leave school and tend to the family sheep. Under his father's watchful eyes and the victim of his sadistic behavior, Gavino spends the next fourteen years tending sheep in the Sardinian mountains. There, he begins to discover "things" for himself and rebels against his father.

Gavino is rescued from his family and isolation when he is called for military service. During his time with the army, he learns about electronics, the Italian language, and classical music, yearning all the while for a university education.

When Gavino returns home, he declares to his father that he will attend university. His father is against this and tells him that he will throw him out of the family home. They have a nasty fight, but Gavino eventually attends university and emerges as a brilliant student. He becomes a linguist, specializing in the origins of the Sardinian language.

The film ends again in a documentary style as Gavino Ledda himself explains why he wrote his book and what Sardinian children may expect as inhabitants of a rural area with close ties to the land.

Cast[edit]

Music[edit]

Critical reception[edit]

Janet Maslin, film critic for The New York Times, praised the film and wrote, "Padre Padrone is stirringly affirmative. It's also a bit simple: The patriarchal behavior of Gavino's father is so readily accepted as an unfathomable given constant that the film never offers much insight into the man or the culture that fostered him. Intriguingly aberrant behavior is chalked up to tradition, and thus robbed of some of its ferocity. But the film is vivid and very moving, coarse but seldom blunt, and filled with raw landscapes that underscore the naturalness and inevitability of the father-son rituals it depicts."[9]

Variety magazine wrote, "Around the initiation of a seven-year-old boy into the lonely life of sheep herder until his triumphant rift at the age of 20 with a remarkably overbearing father-patriarch (Omero Antonutti), the Taviani brothers have for the most part succeeded in adapting a miniature epic...In a long final part, accenting the boy's iron will to learn right up to a high school diploma, the final showdown between patriarch and rebel son is perhaps a more consequent narrative."[10]

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 100% based on 6 reviews with an average score of 7.3/10.[11]

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited this movie as one of his 100 favorite films.[12]

Awards[edit]

Wins

Nominations

References[edit]

  1. ^ Padre padrone at IMDb Edit this at Wikidata.
  2. ^ French, Philip (23 September 2007). "Padre Padrone". the Guardian.
  3. ^ "PADRE PADRONE: My Father My Master by Gavino Ledda - Kirkus Reviews".
  4. ^ "Padre Padrone (Father and Master). 1977. Written and directed by Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani - MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art.
  5. ^ "Padre Padrone". cohenfilmcollection.net.
  6. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Padre Padrone". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
  7. ^ Curran, Daniel, ed. Foreign Films, film review and analysis of Padre Padrone, page 135, 1989. Evanston, Illinois: Cinebooks. ISBN 0-933997-22-1.
  8. ^ "Ecco i cento film italiani da salvare Corriere della Sera". www.corriere.it. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  9. ^ Maslin, Janet. The New York Times, film review, "Man's Inhumanity to Son," December 24, 1977. Last accessed: December 31, 2007.
  10. ^ Variety. Film review, December 24, 1977. Last accessed: December 31, 2007.
  11. ^ "Padre Padrone (1977)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved April 22, 2017.
  12. ^ Thomas-Mason, Lee. "From Stanley Kubrick to Martin Scorsese: Akira Kurosawa once named his top 100 favourite films of all time". Far Out Magazine. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
  13. ^ "Ente David di Donatello - Accademia del Cinema Italiano". Archived from the original on 21 October 2013. Retrieved 14 January 2011.

External links[edit]



Padre Padrone Bad Dad
Year: 1977
Director: Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
Stars: Omero Antonutti, Saverio Marconi, Marcella Michelangeli, Fabrizio Forte, Marino Cenna, Stanko Molnar, Nanni Moretti
Genre: BiopicBuy from Amazon
Rating: 7 (from 2 votes)

Review: Gavino Ledda has written a bestselling book in Italy all about his experiences growing up in Sardinia and the harsh life it was there under his tyrannical father (Omero Antonutti). For all the dreadful treatment he was subjected to at his hands, Gavino most vividly recalls being in primary school and his father showed up brandishing a large stick, demanding that the little boy go with him to begin his training as a shepherd. Gavino was so scared he wet himself, but the teacher had no choice but to give him up, and when the other children laughed the father frightened them into silence by telling them their fathers would be doing the same...

As a portrait of growing up, they don't come much bleaker than Padre Padrone, and even though the protagonist escapes to better himself, as is clear from the opening introduced by the actual Ledda, what stays in the mind is this culture of beating the ambition out of generations of children so they can carry on the traditions that their fathers cannot see any way of getting out of. Although there are moments of humour, some more dubious than others, it's the fearsome father that dominates, never allowing any love for his children to overtake his violent and strict ways.

Once Gavino (as a child, played by Fabrizio Forte) has been dragged out of school, there are a number of lonely years he has stretching ahead of him as he is made to sit with the sheep, all alone, often in the pitch black of night, to protect them from carnivores or bandits. Although, as the teacher points out, it's absurd to leave such a small child in charge of the flock when there's very little he could do if carnivores or bandits did turn up. This doesn't matter to his father, as long as his son is following his orders and doing exactly as he says, then that's the most important thing.

This is no sentimental idyll that Leddo conveys, quite the opposite in fact, and the only company his younger self can find is with the other boy shepherds who risk beatings simply by talking to someone else and not offering their full attention to the flock. There's no question in your mind that what we are seeing was based on true events, as after all some of it is so unpleasantly bizarre that you cannot imagine someone would make it up, from the sheep deliberately shitting in the milk when Gavino is pulling on its udders, to the bestiality often mentioned when the subject of this film comes up - I guess it really does get lonely out there.

But Gavino's story does not concentrate on his earliest years, as we jump forward in time to when he was twenty (now played by Saverio Marconi), still tending the flock but feeling more than ever that he has to get some kind of education so he can get away from his father. Eventually he joins the army, as ever under his father's orders, but the old man has made a mistake and now Gavino can learn about the world he has only dreamed of. He is taken under the wing of fellow soldier Cesare (Nanni Moretti), the only one who can understand his Sardinian dialect, and life begins to open up for him, leaving him a chance to enjoy the arts, especially the music he has only had tantalising glimpses of. Although made for Italian television, Padre Padrone was released theatrically and won awards for directors the Taviani brothers, notably the Palm d'Or at Cannes, suggesting that Leddo's story has a power that extends beyond the borders of his country; not an easy watch, but a worthwhile one even if it's to appreciate what you have now, even if you suffered a terrible childhood too. Music by Egisto Macchi.
Reviewer: Graeme Clark


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