The first film of the Taviani brothers to be shown in the U.S. was 1977's PADRE PADRONE. The film was the true story of the life of Gavino Ledda, the son of a Sardinian shepherd, and how he managed to escape his harsh, almost barbaric existence by slowly educating himself, despite violent opposition from his brutal father. The drama was originally filmed by the Taviani brothers for Italian television but won the Palme d'Or prize at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival.
The author of the autobiographical book the movie is based on, Gavino Ledda, appears at the beginning and the end of the movie and talks to the audience. He gives a stick to the actor playing the father: a symbol of the violence the father exerts on his son.
Janet Maslin, film critic for the New York Times, wrote, "Padre Padrone is stirringly affirmative. It's also a bit simple: The patriarchal behavior of Gavino's father is so readily accepted as an unfathomable given constant that the film never offers much insight into the man or the culture that fostered him. Intriguingly aberrant behavior is chalked up to tradition, and thus robbed of some of its ferocity. But the film is vivid and very moving, coarse but seldom blunt, and filled with raw landscapes that underscore the naturalness and inevitability of the father-son rituals it depicts."
Variety also lauded the film and wrote, "Around the initiation of a seven-year-old boy into the lonely life of sheep herder until his triumphant rift at the age of 20 with a remarkably overbearing father-patriarch (Omero Antonutti), the Taviani brothers have for the most part succeeded in adapting a miniature epic...In a long final part, accenting the boy's iron will to learn right up to a high school diploma, the final showdown between patriarch and rebel son is perhaps a more consequent narrative."
Egisto Macchi's score, along with some classical music used in the film, was released on an LP from Feeling Records. In 1979, an RCA LP combined the original cues with Ennio Morricone's score for an earlier Taviani brothers film, ALLONSANFAN. Neither recording has been re-issued on CD.
THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS is a fantasy war drama that follows several inhabitants of an Italian town during the end of World War II. Defeat is certain for the German army, and the front is retreating back to Germany, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. The Germans plan to blow up several buildings in the town, and have told all the villagers to congregate in the town's church. Approximately half of the town decides to stay, and place their trust in the church. The rest of the town dresses in dark clothing, and go out to seek the Americans, who are rumored to be nearby, liberating towns as they come to them.
The church scene, where Germans bomb the church full of people, was based on real life events that took place in San Miniato (the birthplace of Paolo and Vittorio Taviani). However, more than two decades after the movie was made, the case was reopened and it was discovered, that the fatal bomb actually belonged to the American army, and hit the church accidentally.
The film was given a rapturous review by the critic Pauline Kael in The New Yorker: "THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS is so good it's thrilling. This new film encompasses a vision of the world. Comedy, tragedy, vaudeville, melodrama - they're all here, and inseparable...In its feeling and completeness, SHOOTING STARS may be close to the rank of Jean Renoir's bafflingly beautiful GRAND ILLUSION...unreality doesn't seem divorced from experience (as it does with Fellini) - it's experience made more intense...For the Tavianis, as for Cecilia, the search for the American liberators is the time of their lives. For an American audience, the film stirs warm but tormenting memories of a time when we were beloved and were a hopeful people."
Roger Ebert was less enthusiastic: "It's beautiful film, but it's a disappointment, a series of scenes in which peasants in wartime Italy seem to be posing for heroic post office murals...PADRE PADRONE had an immediately, earthly feel, THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS seems more calculated. The movie is told as a memory by a young girl who recalls a night when the stars fell and the war turned and the people of the village faced their individual turning points. Her memories, alas, do not add up to a strong narrative; nostalgia alone is supposed to carry us along, and since everything happened so long ago, it hardly seems to matter."
Nicola Piovani's score for the 1982 film was released on a CAM LP and reissued on CD in 1991. In 2014, Quartet re-released the album along with the original film cues and alternates.
KAOS depicts four short stories from Pirandello's 15-volume series Novelle per un anno, which play around his birthplace in the 19th century. A raven, which in the introduction is shown to get a bell around its neck from locals, leads the audience from one story to the next. The 1984 film won the David di Donatello awards for best production and best screenplay and received 6 other nominations, including best music and best direction for the Tavianis. The brothers lost to director Francesco Rosi for his filmization of the opera CARMEN. KAOS also won the Silver Ribbon award for best screenplay from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists.
The film was well-received, but because of its over-three-hour length, some countries shortened the film by removing one of the segments. Nicola Piovani's score received an LP release from RCA in France and a later French CD release from Milan in 1990.
GOOD MORNING BABYLON follows the story of two Italian brothers who emigrate to America and find work as set designers for D.W. Griffith's silent film epic INTOLERANCE (1916). After many adventures and near-disasters, they end up marrying beautiful actresses, but tragedy strikes with the arrival of World War I, which finds the brothers fighting on opposite sides.
This was the Taviani brothers' first English-language film. Its stars include American-born Vincent Spano as one of the brothers, Italian-born Greta Scacchi, and Englishman Charles Dance as D.W. Griffith. The 1987 film was neither a critical nor a financial success in the U.S., and it was the last of the Taviani's films to get a major American release. Only two of their seven subsequent theatrical films played commercially in the U.S.
