The Night of the Shooting Stars

Paolo and Vittorio Taviani won the Grand Prix at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival with their delicate and delirious story of war and survival as seen through the eyes of a 6-year-old girl. The Taviani brothers bring a unique sensibility to their films, a post-neo-realist style filled with a sense of wonder and absurdity amidst the acceptance of brutality and death. It comes alive in this odyssey of Italian villagers fleeing the vindictive actions of the Nazis and Italian fascist soldiers as the Americans advance toward their Tuscan village in 1944. The climactic battle in the wheat field between the partisans and the black-shirts is a chaotic and messy farce without a punch line, where the enemy could be a neighbor or friend, and mercy is a luxury that they can't afford. Koch Lorber's new version is the first anamorphic wide-screen U.S. release, but the disc I watched was marred by brief but jarring digital artifacts in a couple of spots -- hard to tell if it's a mastering or manufacturing error, but sloppy nonetheless. Also features an 84-minute interview program with Paolo and Vittorio Taviani from the series "Italian Cinema: Contributions and Protagonists," hosted by Carlo Lizzani and originally made for Italian television in 2002.