IMDb >
Così ridevano (1998)
Watch It
Buy it at Amazon
Rent it at
blockbuster.com
Discuss in Boards More at IMDb Pro Add to My Movies Update Data
blockbuster.com
BETA
Discuss in Boards More at IMDb Pro Add to My Movies Update Data
Quicklinks
Top Links
trailers and videosfull cast and crewtriviaofficial sitesmemorable quotesOverview
main detailscombined detailsfull cast and crewcompany creditstv scheduleAwards & Reviews
user commentsexternal reviewsnewsgroup reviewsawardsuser ratingsparents guiderecommendationsmessage boardPlot & Quotes
plot summaryplot synopsisplot keywordsAmazon.com summarymemorable quotesFun Stuff
triviagoofssoundtrack listingcrazy creditsalternate versionsmovie connectionsFAQOther Info
merchandising linksbox office/businessrelease datesfilming locationstechnical specslaserdisc detailsDVD detailsliterature listingsNewsDeskPromotional
taglines trailers and videos posters photo galleryExternal Links
showtimesofficial sitesmiscellaneousphotographssound clipsvideo clipsCosì ridevano (1998) More at IMDbPro »
| Photos (see all 3 | slideshow) |
Overview
User Rating:
Release Date:
2 October 1998 (Italy) morePlot:
Turin at the end of the fifties: two brothers have emigrated there from Sicily and the older works very... more | add synopsisAwards:
3 wins moreUser Comments:
A near-masterpiece, highly recommended. moreCast
(Cast overview, first billed only)| Francesco Giuffrida | ... | Pietro | |
| Enrico Lo Verso | ... | Giovanni | |
| Rosaria Danzè | ... | Lucia | |
| Fabrizio Gifuni | ... | Pelaia | |
| Claudio Contartese | ... | Rosario | |
| Domenico Ragusa | ... | Simone | |
| Simonetta Benozzo | ... | Ada | |
| Pietro Paglietti | ... | Battista | |
| Corrado Borsa | ... | Teacher at Examination | |
| Barbara Braga | ... | Girl at Bar | |
| Calogero Caruana | ... | Giovanni's Friend | |
| Edoardo Ciciriello | ... | School Assistant from Naples | |
| Valerio Contartese | ... | Unemployed Boy from Calabria | |
| Iolanda Donnini | ... | Mrs. Verusio | |
| Erika Doria | ... | Alessandra |
Additional Details
Parents Guide:
Add content advisory for parentsRuntime:
124 minCountry:
ItalyLanguage:
ItalianColor:
ColorSound Mix:
Dolby SRFilming Locations:
Turin, Piedmont, ItalyFun Stuff
Trivia:
Despite winning the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, Gianni Amelio still had to wait over three years before he saw his film released in the US. moreQuotes:
Giovanni: You think your children are your own, then they learn to walk and they leave you. Know what they say back home? "Raise hogs, 'cause then you can eat them" moreFAQ
This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.more
Message Boards
Discuss this movie with other users on IMDb message board for Così ridevano (1998)Recommendations
If you enjoyed this title, our database also recommends:
Show more recommendations
|
|
|
|
|
| The Good Earth | Notes on a Scandal | Heaven | La meglio gioventù | River's Edge |
|
IMDb User Rating:
|
IMDb User Rating:
|
IMDb User Rating:
|
IMDb User Rating:
|
IMDb User Rating:
|
Related Links
| Full cast and crew | Company credits | External reviews |
| IMDb Drama section | IMDb Italy section | Add this title to MyMovies |




Watched on Italian DVD (using the standard-Italian subtitles for the hearing-impaired to decode the Sicilian dialect) for the first time March 2005. Winner of the top prize "Leone d'Oro" at Venice. Actually available as of 2004 on a US code DVD.
The title, referring to an old joke column, is ironic. The film's review of Italian post-war economic miracle years is deeply tinged with sadness and a sense of the price paid in innocence lost to gain security and status. The whole focus is on the love between two Sicilian brothers, Giovanni and Pietro. The angel-faced Pietro (Francesco Giuffrida) from the first appears devious. When his brother arrives at the station, he slinks off and hides from him. He's lazy, a dandy, a liar, a faker, a bad seed. Yet he's worshiped by the innocent, muscular, illiterate Giovanni (Enrico Lo Verso), who has turned up with other southern immigrants at the Turin railway station intending just to visit his baby brother as the film opens and then stays on in the North to support him.
The mise-en-scène is visually beautiful but conventionalizes the period into a kind of grimy poetry more worthy of twenty or thirty years earlier, no doubt consciously echoing Italian neorealist films (Amelio has been called the new De Sica) or becoming a glossier color version of Visconti's mournful epic tragedy of southern Italians in Milan, "Rocco and His Brothers" (1960). My DVD's Italian jacket copy translates a paragraph from Stephen Holden's 2001 NYTimes review expanding one of its key ideas: "'Così rideveno'has the power to keep its own secrets," this Italian version reads. "Without ever being moralistic, by the end it becomes the metaphor for a whole society that makes a kind of tacit pact with itself never to look too deeply into the hidden effects social processes have on individuals and their destinies." The interest -- and yet the frustration -- of the film is that its sequences each appear revelatory, but shed little light on the intervening periods of time. It is organized in a "rather elegant" manner (Rosenbaum) into a structure of microscopic views of single days out of each year from 1959 through 1964, each day designated by a key word: "arrivals," "deceptions," "money", "letters, "blood," and "families." This neat structure masks a surrounding mystery in the relationship between the two brothers, and we deduce for ourselves from the way they seek out and avoid each other how alike and interdependent they are. Each cherishes illusions about the other; one is proud, the other ashamed. Vivid and touching as the film is, it's also highly artificial, notably in how little of the two characters' lives is made clear, how little the world outside their relationship is explored.
Metaphorical indeed, "Così ridevano" explores an inseparable (and ultimately false) dichotomy between innocence and experience, naiveté and sophistication that may go to the heart not only of North-South relations but of the Italian soul. Both actors, Amelio regular Lo Verso and newcomer Giuffreda, are remarkable, and the scenes between them are heartbreaking.
So far the only other Amelio film I've seen is "The Housekeys" ("Le chiavi di casa," 2004), which being a documentary-like chronicle of a short stretch of contemporary time, seems so different, and yet on reflection is so similar in feeling. Obviously Amelio is an extraordinary director and I must see "Lamarica" and "Stolen Children" ("Il ladro di bambini"), both also starring the intense, soulful Lo Verso, which have received the highest praise of any of Amelio's films.