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The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
(Il giardino dei Finzi Contini)

Screening on Film
Directed by Vittorio De Sica.
With Lino Capolicchio, Dominique Sanda, Fabio Testi.
West Germany/Italy, 1970, 35mm, color, 94 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

A middle-class student (Capolicchio), invited to research his thesis in the private library of the wealthy Finzi-Contini family, ends up falling in love with the family's beautiful daughter (Sanda). As the anti-Semitic edicts imposed by Mussolini in the late 1930s begin to take effect, the Jewish Finzi-Continis remain oblivious to the severe consequences they must inevitably face. The film was regarded by many critics as a return to form for De Sica, who spent much of the 1960s directing Sophia Loren vehicles It was awarded the 1972 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Part of film series

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Treasures From The Harvard Film Archive

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Vittorio De Sica. Neorealism, Melodrama, Fantasy

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The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig

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Rosine Mbakam, 2025 McMillan-Stewart Fellow