Vittorio De Sica’s award-winning film The Garden of the Finzi-Contini, recently restored and reissued, approaches the Holocaust from an oblique angle, stopping short of the barbed wire and chimneys strewing human ash. The film, largely faithful to the Giorgio Bassani novel from which it was adapted, has eclipsed the book for decades, yet the original is well worth reading, whether or not one has seen the film.
Bassani, writing autobiographically in the aftermath of the carnage, tells his story in the first person as if reliving the bittersweet years preceding the Finzi-Contini’s demise. A sympathetic narrator Giorgio is not. He portrays himself as no better or worse than the characters who surround him, a Jewish elite who are steadily losing their freedoms, livelihoods and dreams.
Although De Sica is best known as a Neo-Realist filmmaker, in The Garden of the Finzi Contini he lapses into the sort of soft-focus nostalgia common when chronicling a lost way of life. Bassani, too, in his lush yet distanced prose conveys a certain wistfulness, but ultimately the novel is a confession—of human pettiness, failure of spirit, and indelible guilt. The power of this confession does not quite hold in the film, however evocative the cinematography or convincing the performances.
Is there a place within the literature of the Holocaust for works like Bassani’s that intentionally remain on the fringe of the violence where there are neither heroes nor villains, only imperfect human beings lethally distracted by quotidian preoccupations? What do they have to teach us?
Bassani quotes from I promessi sposi, “The heart, to be sure, always has something to say about what is to
come, to him who heeds it. But what does the heart know? Only a little of what has already happened.”
The author, unable to rectify the past, grapples in this thinly disguised memoir to enshrine its ghosts. Readers who come to The Garden of the Finzi-Contini looking for answers find instead a tormented plea for understanding by an imperfect man who survived, remembering those who did not.
For me, “on the fringe of the violence” is exactly where many of the most affecting stories play out. Violence and ugliness can be numbing–we force ourselves to go numb in self-defense. The quieter spectacle of real human beings muddling through to sometimes cruel destinies is not only more engaging, but often more moving.
Sounds like an enticing movie, if perhaps a little frustrating in the wrap up? Actually I like movies (and plays) that leave me thinking rather than tied up in a neat package.
I agree with La that there is power in restraint, especially when dealing with subject matter as dark and fathomless as the Holocaust. To their credit, neither Bassani nor De Sica attempted to—in Vera’s words—make a “neat package” of an intricate story spawned by a nightmarish chapter in world history.
Thank you for this post, Germaine. Have you read Adam Kirsch’s recent take in Tablet? http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/87248/earthly-gardens/
I had not been aware of Adam’s excellent commentary on the book until Erica was kind enough to send the link. Adam eloquently probes questions of Jewish identity, divided loyalties, and love.