"The Family," an album with a velvet cover, is meant to touch the extended family of man. Formal portraits, bookends in this 80-year saga, enclose the central story, which opens with the baptism of Carlo, a baby in his grandfather's lap, and ends with Carlo as a grandfather with a baby in his arms. And never once do we get out of the house, whose rooms provide the film's structure. Comfort or passion? Carlo couldn't really decide until it was too late.
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A great movie by master of Italian cinema, Ettore Scola, the director of C'eravamo tanti amati, La cena and Le Bal. This film is a wonderful insight view of the ups and downs of a middle class family, how everybody grows, makes his own family, the good and the bad moments, crisis and celebrations. Vittorio Gassmann delights with his portrait of Carlo, a Literature professor whose life is rather plain but fulfilled with the stories of everybody else in his house, his family. Also Fanny Ardant and Stephania Sandrelli do a great job as two sisters who fall in love with the same man, and try to live with that pain inside, putting family respect before anything else.
Most of the main characters in this movie are played by more than one actor since the story depicts a family during a period of nearly eighty years. All transitions from one actor to the next are smooth; except for that between the actors who portrayed Carlo, the protagonist. Andrea Occhipinti portrays a handsome and quite charismatic young Carlo, and after a period of about fifteen years in the movie, Vittorio Gassman (35 years older than Mr. Occhipinti) begins to play Carlo. Mr. Gassman looks very little like Mr. Occhipinti, and the miscasting damaged the film which otherwise would have been better than what I gave it, 7/10.
This is a wonderful movie, but it starts off kind of slowly. At one point as I was wondering why I am watching it. But it grows on you and before you know it you are hooked. It's not the kind of movie Americans are used to - it deals with emotions, sensitivity, love, involvement, but without much reliance on special effects, sex, or violence. It explores the meaning of life, but it's one flaw is the failure to bring the search for God into it.
...And I was wondering why. That guy on the Washington Post said the film is boring because "it´s like watching some other´s family album"... On the paper, I´d agree with him, but after watching the movie i have to say that I do not. I guess it has to do with the little, precious details (those long travellings inside the house, for instance: this is a very well directed movie), the humor, the music, with Gassman of course, and with the fact that we´re actually watching the whole life of a man we cannot dislike: the last scene, with the 80 years old Gassman -the grandfather now- posing with all his family for the photo (as in the very first scene, when he´s a baby surrounded by people that will die eventually) has such deep emotional impact, because, I guess, shows finally that life is a trip that inevitably has an end, and where the new ones will occupy the seat of the old ones, and that´s how it should be, and the movie has a sense of calm acceptation of that. In "La famiglia" you see, as Cocteau said, "death doing her work". It´s true that the story seems to have no point, but also, I don´t think life has a point. At least I cannot see one...I really liked this movie. In my opinion, 7/10.
