The Night Of The Shooting Stars DVD Review

Night of the Shooting Stars is a film by the Taviani brothers, two of Italy’s most celebrated filmmakers. This 1982 film seems to be where the Taviani brothers were at their best, purveyors of brilliant Italian cinema, but while their ideas are that their best, their execution is not. Sadly, I have found two out of three of their films to fit this category. The film opens with a woman telling a story to her infant son about a town’s refusal to comply with the Nazi occupation of Italy. This real event is framed by a quoting of The Iliad, which of course frames the film in lovely splendor but with in mind the dangers in Italy at this time. There is majesty to the film, but its more fantastic elements are not fully shown. The shooting stars in the film are not emphasized but rather discussed, and shown in imagery; we know what she means by shooting stars when one sees the rockets flying overhead, but in a story that attempts to be majestic, we should see these stars as a child would see one. Beautiful cinematography is what one thinks when one looks at the images in this film, and then one is merely to think: beautiful. But that comprises most of its charm. This is a very interesting story also, but one that appears to define Italian identity after it has framed it in the story of a girl, who drifts into the background far too often, despite the story being narrated by her to her young son. There are elements when her side o the story shines through, and they are spectacular, such as when she unknowingly sits on eggs that the entire family and refugees were counting on for survival. During a night of the bombings she goes out in the middle of a field risking death and smashes the remaining eggs. There are also very telling conceptions of Italian womanhood in the film that are of great merit, particularly a scene when the narrators’ mother tells a maturing girl the meaning of beauty and of ugliness as they bathe under the gaze of an admirer of the narrator’s mother But the film’s main flaw is that time elapses quickly in this story, perhaps too quickly. Having seen another Taviani film, which fits Shooting Stars’ “oral tradition” structure, it seems as though they make a commentary on innocence and identity based on this, I feel their message and films would be stronger if they were less condensed. Children are what its focus maintains, and it seems to want to mediate more in the lives of the adults, rather than give the perspective of a child it seems to offer. Even when it describes the feelings of children, they do not seem to be whole descriptions which would befit a woman telling a story to her child. For example, there is a sniveling brat who is the fifteen year old son of general who is mean spirited as he has been taken in by all that has occurred, and is a vicious monster, but when threatened with a gun cowers. But it is not dealt with in a way that evokes that childishness, that fey wonder that of course he has despite being vicious. It is merely that the story is told form the point of view of an adult remembering childhood, and her thoughts and understandings are put by the wayside, how she would see a fellow child like this, that render the film slightly unfocused, if for good reason. The little girl must bear witness to this and in a fantastic display she imagines the Trojans over taking the invading Greeks, as has been told to her by her grandparents, the legends overtake the real life in her mind for a brief second, but the tone therefore is not constant and does not particularly evoke her experience. Some of this is to its credit, and some of it is not. It defies the child’s eye view to show us some of the real horrors of war, but it does so while also showing us fantastic images. It is therefore, a very good film that is flawed in its attempts to show us effectively the period in time when Italian identity was so divided as they Americans were viewed as saviors and as enemies as the soldiers in the war were in league with fascist and the citizens not so easily convinced. Therefore it works on some level, but only to a marginal extent. Modern Italian cinema, regardless, owes a great deal to the Taviani brothers, who continually it seems force the country to look back at its own identity with an unflinching eye. That it is unflinching in the lens of a little girl is merely an inconsistency that does not permeate the beauty of the subject matter. Yes, it seems somewhat detached, for we cannot know these people any more than the infant son that Cecilia tells her story to. Rarely have I seen a film that feels detached yet that is so powerful. The extras of the DVD include the Taviani brothers talking about cinema. An interesting addition that will broaden one’s understanding of the film, but will not make it better in one’s mind.