John Turturro	Primo Levi
Massimo Ghini	Cesare
Rade Serbedzija	the Greek
Teco Celio	colonel Rovi
Roberto Citran	Unverdorben
Claudio Bisio	Ferrari
Andy Luotto	D'Agata
Agnieszka Wagner	Galina
Viacheslav Olhovsky	lieutenant Sergej
Lorenza Indovina	Flora
Igor Bezgin	Egorov
Stefano Dionisi	Daniele
Maryna Gerasymenco	Marja Fiodorovna

PLOT

When the end of the second world war is announced, a group of deported is freed by the Russians from the lager of Auschwitz but, in absence of indications or of points of reference, it remains despersed. There are Polish, Ceki, French and also Italians. For a little bit all remain united, then the Italians entrust to a fellow countryman that gives himself out as a responsible of the relationships with the Russians and they try to think how to return back home. Full of difficulty faced in the more desperate conditions, it starts a trip.
In the group of Primo Levi, that continues to relive inside himself the orrors of the lager, and almost he doesn’t succeed in thinking to a different life anymore.There are Cesare, very extrovert, and then Daniele, Ferrari, Unverdorben, D’Agata. Together they cross central Europe, now afoot now on the train of fortune sometimes thinking about having found the right road, and prey of the depression for a finish that seems to get more and more further. During the walk, Primo meets a Greek disenchanted and disillusioned that offers him a lot of lessons of life. The trip goes on and it becomes occasion to know better the others and themselves. Moments of depression are alternated, in everybody, but especially in Primo, to occasions of rediscovery of joys forgotten as the loving tension. In rapid, dramatic flashbacks the memoirs of the lager again and Primo, in contact with a reality that is reopened to life , feels almost the guilt to have survived. The group finally arrives to Munich, where a German soldier sees on Primo Auschswitz’s signal and he bents to gives him his excuses. The last stop is Turin, at home, where Primo finds again his sister and his mama and rediscovers the daily life; it is a magic moment, suspended as a truce between one tragedy and another. In the calm of his room, sat to the typewriter, he tries to recall the past tragedy, but the guilt feeling is strong and not easy to remove.

PRIZES

David of Donatello for the best direction, best film and best production.
Nomination at the Film Festival of Cannes for Francesto Rosi
Audience Award at the Sao Paulo International Film Festival for Rosi

CRITIQUE

To stop the attention of the spectator on the “don’t forget” pretended by Levi, in the act to direct La tregua and to prepare the preparatory cardboards (what is called “prefilm”), Rosi entrusted to the double register of the emotion and of the contemplation, of the emotional involvement and of the meditation on the moral example that can be drawn. And, tiing them with a pendulum-like movement, passes from the recording of an emotion to moments that, to intend us, we will call epic. Pay attention as in the film they are alternated, and heal among them, elements that on the paper would be said belonging to different codes: the touched note (the old woman that welcomes two Italians in the little store and that offers them some food) or joking (the Greek’s episode, Cesare’s figure that, as it already happened in Levi, seem comedy elements grafted on a dramatic fabric) and the expansion of the epic character that distinguishes the drawing near the death place of the four Russian soldiers, almost riders of the apoclaypse that breaks the fog, and later the march of the troops that, in the life disorder that belongs to life, return in their country, or the greeting to the victorious Soviet general that announces the repatriation to the wandering after months, years of wait. The narrative materials recomposed in the film pretended an articulation of extreme syntactic simplicity that rigorously excluded any ambiguity, any confusion, any indeterminateness. And Rosi has looked for and he has found a pure style forcing himself to the maximum control of the mean’s possibilities, to an absolyte economy of the cime camera potentialities (thing that isopposed with the necessity to let move the masses, to force them to an extreme naturalness). (Rivista del cinematografo, Francesco Bolzoni, March 1997, translated by Alice Castoldi)

A controversial film, disappointing and suffered (during the production they have died the manager of the photgraphy Pasqualino De Santis, replaced by Marco Pontecorvo and the editor Ruggero Mastroianni, replaced by Bruno Serandrea), that doesn’t succeed to conjugate ideological passion and narrative emotion. Oscillating between the picaresque and the dark without finding direction satisfactory solutions, Rosi privileges the scenes of surprise in comparison to the general seal, and he opts for a caricatural emphasizing of the characters crowd, a wrapping of luxury and an unbearabel soundtrack of effect of Luis Bacalov.(P. Mereghetti “Dizionario dei film 1998”, translated by Alice Castoldi)

NOTES

During the production the photography director Pasqualino De Santis, replaced by Marco Pontecorvo and the editor Ruggero Mastroianni, replaced by Bruno Serandrea have died.