The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of the Wooden Clogs captures a slice of rural life in turn of the century Italy in all its disarming simplicity. The authenticity of the depiction of life of early twentieth century rural Italy is partly an outcome of Olmi's use of non-professional actors. Their gestures, their remarkable tenacity and gentleness is there to be seen through the transparent style of Olmi's cinematic art, that is part-realism and part-romanticism. Through the lens of Olmi's peculiar art, the heart of the farmer's world, its inner rhythms and moods, the lived experience of rural life, shines on screen with a vividness that is astounding.The movie seems like a documentary at times but that is only because of the phenomenal art of Olmi's cinema. The gestures of the non-actors, their lack of "acting", their remarkable lack of consciousness show a radical form of innocence that belies the richness of the tools at Olmi's disposal, the peculiar embellishments of cinematography, the baroque soundtrack, the marvelous compositional uses of his style.The purity of Olmi's style, utterly new and unique, is perfectly appropriate for the simple, tranquil, even prelapsarian quality of the form of life shown in this film. The closest literary analog I can think of is Tolstoy's spare narratives in his short stories, where meaning is conveyed in concentrated moments of feeling without calling attention to the aesthetic framing that makes possible the density of the lived experience. Even if the film feels like a documentary, or a highly sophisticated form of ethnography, Olmi employs a highly refined style to convey simple human emotions in all its original, even transcendent, power. This film resurrects the spirit of the neo-realist films of the 1940s, their characteristic honesty, decency, and tenaciousness, while also bringing in a subtle formalism that has much to contribute to the realism of the piece.This is not a sentimental film. Far from it. Aspects of survival weave into this idyllic life that also shock us out of any expectation of an overly romanticized look at rural life. The struggle in the daily game of survival has a toughness about it. Rural life may seem idyllic, even gentle, but that outward grace emerges out of an unquestioning acceptance of the full cycle of life, its pleasantries and harshness. The scenes that register the tragic dimensions of life make the more transcendental moments that much more luminous.There is one scene in this film that conveys clearly and unforgettably how beauty emerges out of the surprise of ordinary moments. This is fully present in the gesture of a young woman just after she has learned that she is to be married to the man she has taken a liking to. Her face fills the screen, but her eyes look downward, closed, with a shyness that tries hard not to reveal her happiness. She has a faint smile on her lips, however, and her face has the glow of hope that she can hardly hide. She is radiantly beautiful unaware of her luminous look. That expression, so unconscious of itself, and yet so blissful is among the most powerful expressions of beauty on film. There is no display of beauty, just the simple, open, fact of beauty present in all its pristine quality for us to see. Her shyness highlights her beauty; her silence, unconditional love, all these "emotions" are brought together in that image. By showing us this sort of beauty, Olmi stands out for me, among a handful of filmmakers, as an inspired artist who has pushed the boundaries of cinema, what it can and should express, to an entirely new qualitative level.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs is an unflinchingly honest look at rural Italian life at the turn of the twentieth century. Peasants do not know how to read, the priest urges people to believe on the strength of miracles and a traveling peddler is a source of excitement. But the beauty of family and community comes through in a way the modern West sorely lacks.There is no real plot or narrative. Events occur in the lives of the peasants; some good, some bad. The cinematography is exquisite, particularly in this restored version. But do not expect much drama in the three hour plus movie.It is worth watching if you like to time-travel, to see a place that once was typical of Europe and now exists mostly only in the mind.Personally, I loved it and understood why it won the Palmes D’Or at the Cannes film festival. But movies like this are an acquired taste. If you like novels with little narrative, say Faulkner or Proust, you are likely to also love the Tree of Wooden Clogs. For those who like movies with action scenes seemingly drawn from the Fast and the Furious this is a safe pass.

The Tree of wooden clogs is a wonderful, raw portrayal of rural peasant life in turn of the century (i.e. 19th-20th Century) Italy, magnificiently portraying the joys, sorrows , trepidations, faith and charity of a group of tenant farmers. It also very beautifully portrays the hope that these people have for a better tomorrow. It is a time of hardships and yet a time of great love for the less fortunate.......a much better time, just because of the latter. It is composed entirely of a cast of non-actors. A great film on realism.Be forewarned ye vegetarians and lovers of animals. There is a very ( emphasis on VERY) descriptive slaughter of a pig and a duck...... (put me off bacon for a couple of days!).Not something one should let children see....!However the review of two stars is not for the film itself but for the banal subtitles.....too few and far between that a chunk of the conversation is lost.Eventhough the producers might have chosen to omit certain segments of the dialogue, I genuinely feel that the charchter of the film is inevitably, to a certain degree, lost as well.Secondly the DVD is PAL format. So unless you have a multi-system player, one can only use one's computer to watch this film. Why is a PAL system film being sold in North America? Search me...... and why is it region 0 (all regions)?Two thumbs up for the fim....two thumbs down for this DVD release.........

This is a wonderful movie; it depicts life in Northern Italy under difficult circumstances, back when people's lives were controlled by a lot of things. The worst thing was, because of isolation and education not being readily available, these people accepted their fates. The acting is non-acting: it's simple, forthright and honest. Compare the lives of most Americans/Canadians during this time frame, at turn of the 20th Century: People were enjoying vaudville and trying to be happy. Silent films were made to amuse audiences, but still life wasn't half bad for most. Let's hope we never see oppression anywhere in the world again such as depicted in The Tree of Wooden Clogs (bravo Ermanno Olmi).

A little slow by contemporary tastes, more a cultural documentary -- albeit with some minor scripting -- than a feature film. Nevertheless, it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1976, which says a lot either for the film or for the times. Very beautiful and elegiac.

I first saw this film in 1980 and have watched it many times since. My awe at Olmi's massive achievement only grows. It's definitely - along with Ray's 'Pather Panchali (first film in The Apu Trilogy) my Number 1 choice as the best film I've ever seen. In fact, the more I watch those two films, the more I see that Olmi was greatly inspired by Ray and 'Apu'. Notice the homages along the way: the beggars arriving at the door of people almost as poor as the beggar, but finding something to give - 'We must help one another in this world' - and the final scene in both films of the cart heading away from home.As other reviewers have pointed out, 'Clogs' is not a film chock full of action. It takes a year in the lives of a community of peasant farmers in the Bergamo area of Northern Italy. Modernity is knocking at the door: the child is sent to school; the landlord plays a recording of an aria, and the people overhear the miracle; an old uncle taaches a child how to beat the opposition in bringing tomatoes to market early; an impoverished widow manages to keep her large family because the eldest son - little more than a child himself - takes over and finds a job...a succession of small but hugely meaningful acts all add up to a portrait of a traditional society on the cusp of change.Beautifully filmed, the film wins my award because it is warm and universal. Like 'Apu', you could show it in Africa, Arabia or China and it would at once be understood and communicate to the watchers. I know because it's been part of my armoury as a 'teaching aid' to get conversations going in classrooms overseas.This film should have been placed on the rocket that set out to explore the universe and tell any people in other worlds about the best of us. Glorious.

I find it difficult to imagine a more honest (or humane) piece of film-making than Ermano Olmi’s 1978 masterpiece, charting the struggles for existence of a turn of the 19/20th century Lombardian farmstead community – it’s a film that is difficult to imagine being made now, outside the likes of Michelangelo Frammartino or the odd Kiarostami. However, not only is Olmi’s slow-moving, episodic tale funny, tragic, poignant, uplifting and (ultimately) hard-hitting, but it is also an astonishing technical achievement, marshalling as it does an extensive cast of non-professional actors, with a stunning (though austere) production design (whose epic scale ranks with that of Visconti’s The Leopard) and featuring Olmi’s own evocative cinematography (capturing the region’s haunting mists, plus some memorable snow-bound scenes) and the haunting organ music of Bach to accompany the film’s most dramatic moments.And, Olmi certainly does not 'mince words’ here, giving us the reality of 'peasant life’, warts and all. This is a community driven (ruled?) by the church and family (with a little superstition thrown in) – whose livelihood is dependent on life’s rudiments – bringing in the harvest, taking the laundry to the river by wheelbarrow, partaking in communal evening story-telling and singing sessions and unceremoniously slaughtering their livestock to provide sustenance (the squeamish might wish to look away as knives are brandished). The main narrative threads of Olmi’s film cover the ‘'bad news’ imparted by the local priest to Luigi Ornagi’s father Batisti that his son should be sent to school (against 'class expectation’ and with all the expense that it will bring) – presenting the challenge of a 12km round-trip walk in wooden clogs each day – and the story of Teresa Brescianini’s widow Runk and mother of six and the (church-driven, again) suggestion that she may wish to 'give up’ her two youngest to the church orphanage in order to survive economically.In addition, we have the budding romance between a young couple on the farmstead, each demonstrating a degree of restraint and self-respect that (by modern standards) appears to emanate from some far-off world, plus a whole series of brilliant (and often comical) set-pieces. Among the latter are grandfather Giuseppe Brignoli’s Anselmo’s obsession with 'competitive tomato growing’ (thereby outdoing local market rivals), the arrival in town of a travelling fair and the film-stealing turn by the 'fraudulent’ salesman ('I respect women as much as I respect apes!’) and then best of all (and demonstrating Olmi’s brilliant eye for cinematic detail) the lesson against secrecy and greed as another farmstead resident’s plan to ‘cache’ his espied coin in his horse’s shoe backfires hilariously.And, although Olmi’s film is, for the most part, a relatively apolitical tale of 'ordinary folk’ (admittedly struggling to survive), its denouement, in which the paradox is revealed between the community’s reverence for the newly married couple’s adopted son potentially being the son of a 'gentleman’ and the brutal treatment of Batisti’s family by the local 'landlord’, has an undeniably hard-hitting political undercurrent.

This is a lovely film about some very hard lives and times. The cast of non actors make for a high level of realism as do the setting and editing style. The families involved do indeed have hard lives of poverty and are completely in the power of the two authorities, the landowner and the Church. Yet their human qualities of cooperation, kindness and humour are apparent amongst the families. The actual slaughter of a goose and a pig, unedited, remind us of the realities from which we are protected today, of how gentle many of our lives have become. The ending brings home the inability of these families to oppose the power of the landowners. A wonderful and beautiful film.

This is a beautiful masterpiece of Italian cinema, depicting life in the rural farmsteads of Northern Italy in the late19th Century. Unlike the Amazon reviewer, I feel it is not sentimental if you take into account that much Italian cinema has a greater sense of tenderness and poignancy than we are accustomed to. It shows a very unsentimental view of the simplicity and toughness of life then, with low expectations, and makes one feel very overindulged to be to be born into the modern world. Or perhaps our pressures are simply different? You can decide for yourself but this is a film which will stay in your mind and haunt you. Some of the other places in Europe had a similar communal farming life, eg Switzerland, as can be seen at Ballenberg near Brienz, where the farmsteads are kept as a living history (well worth a visit). All in all, this is a wonderful experience of a film and a lesson to filmmakers in authenticity. When can we expect the Blu-ray?

Written and directed by Ermanno Olmi,this is a fine example of Italian neo-realist cinema. The Tree of Wooden Clogs was taken from stories Olmi's grandmother told him and is set in Lombardy around the turn of the century. This 1978 film uses people from the area as actors,and is not only an attack on an outmoded social system but an almost mystical affirmation of the relationship of man to nature,for instance, the tree of the title is cut down by a father to make a pair of clogs for his son.There are ravishing depictions of the changing seasons in a stunning part of Lombardy. This is a documentary that isn't a documentary.