The Tree of Wooden Clogs

 
   
    
Director: Ermanno Olmi
Screenplay: Ermanno Olmi
Cast: Luigi Ornaghi, Francesca Moriggi, Omar Brignoli, Lorenzo Pedroni, Giuseppina Langanelli, Battista Trevaini, Pasqualina Brolis, Massimo Fratus
Production: Rai Cinema
International Distribution: Istituto Luce, via Tuscolana 1055, 00153 Rome, tel. +39 06 72992213 fax +39 06 7222493 www.luce.it luce@luce.it
Year: 1978. Running Time: 170’
Copy made available by Cinecittà Holding
 
The Tree of Wooden Clogs is the story of a farm in the rural setting of the North of Italy at the turning of 19th century with its traditions and customs. This noble, solid culture is marked by essential and simple objectives such as weddings and births, cunning acts and sacrifices, basic needs and hidden vices, God and the earth; all this in the flow of the seasons. Without a leading story, among the others, we have the painful labor of a widow with too many children to feed and the tales told gathering around the fireplace at night with the smells from the stables, the joy of a new love and the torment of an animal breeder fired by his master for cutting a tree because his son needed a pair of clogs to go to school. As in neorealist film, the tree is the symbol of the distance that divides the master from his farm worker, a gap that marks the deep division between two ideological, moral and religious worlds. Those differences that the populist bourgeoisie never could understand are the essence of this masterpiece. Only Art can bridge the gap between the bourgeois ideology and the rural tradition, similar to the harmonic movements of Bach. Correspondingly, the sound track in the film uses Bach to achieve a sacred and liturgical dualism with the emotional oscillation of daily experiences.


 
 

 


 
 
 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      
 
Ermanno Olmi
Born in the province of Bergamo in a family of farmers of Catholic culture, he has often used his origins for inspiration, describing the popular culture and the nostalgia of the past. While still a boy, he moved to Milan where he attended the Academy d’Arte Drammatica and worked for the Edison Volta Company. Between 1953 and 1961 he made 30 documentaries for the company with the world of the working class as the main subject. In 1957 he made his first long feature film, Time Stood Still, about the friendship between a town boy and the old guardian of a dam. In 1961 he won the OCIC Prize and the Critics Award at the Venice International Film Festival with The Job, a fresh and spontaneous work about the expectations of a young couple struggling for their first job. A few years later, he made a film about Pope Giovanni XXIII, And There Came a Man. Meanwhile he worked intensely on tv productions and directed tv movies, investigative films and documentaries. In 1978 he was awarded the Golden Palm at Cannes Festival for the film The Tree of Wooden Clogs. This film with non professional actors, portrayed the simple life of the Po valley country people. The film obtained world wide resonance. In 1982 Ermanno Olmi founded the school cinema called “Ipotesi Cinema” in Bassano del Grappa and the following year, after shooting the documentary Milano ’83, he was hit by a very serious illness and obliged to interrupt his activity for a long period. During this time he turned to writing and wrote the novel Ragazzo della Bovisa, in which, in a poetic mode, he tells of the passage from childhood to adolescence of a boy during the Second World War. Finally he returned to directing with the film Long Live the Lady!, winning the Leone d’argento (The Silver Lion) at Venice Festival in 1987. The following year he directed one of his best films The Legend of the Holy Drinker, based on the novel by Joseph Roth. In 1993 he directed Paolo Villaggio in the film The Secret of the Old Woods. In 1994 he returns to tv with an adaptation of the Bible starting from the Genesis, the Creation and the Big Flood. With The Profession of Arms, successfully presented at Cannes Festival in 2001 (a story about the last days of the life of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, a warrior-leader killed during a fight), Olmi is again at his best finding new life and inspiration. In 2003 he presented Singing Behind Screens, a work based on a true story he found in the archives of Pechino, which won the Nastro d’argento prize for best screenplay. In 2005 he made Tickets, co-directed with Kiarostami and Ken Loach, but without much success. His latest work (2007) One Hundred Nails is considered his artistic testament (Olmi stated he wants to go back to making only documentaries), was very well received though raising discussions and contrasting opinions among public and critics.