The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Not my kind of Jews.

One of Vittorio De Sica’s final efforts, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, is a successful tale of infuriating passivity and self-deception. It begins with the delusion of a wealthy Jewish family in a small Italian town on the eve of World War II. The Finzi-Contini children, a son and daughter, have been banned from the local tennis club. They retreat to a court in their palatial villa and express no discernible anxiety over the rise of fascism in Italy or the implementation of the Racial Laws, which enforced the segregation of the Jewish and native African minorities. With their immense wealth and pride (they boast about owning a statue that dates back to the Borgias), they are able to afford such indifference.

The film chronicles the lives of a few characters in the town of Ferrara, up until the inevitable Jewish deportation. De Sica, however, is primarily interested in investigating the relationship between the cold, glamorous Micòl Finzi-Contini and a young, lovesick literature student Giorgio, also from a Jewish family, albeit one less prominent and rich than Micòl’s. As the situation in Ferrara grows worse for the Jews, De Sica shows us Giorgi’s mounting anger at his circumstances and plays this against the Finzi-Continis’ blissful ignorance, as the family chooses to maintain a “normal life” in their gilded cage. Even as victims to fascism, they reinforce its agenda, seeing themselves as above the discourse. They are, in their minds, different kind of Jews.

De Sica, who has blessed us with neorealist masterpieces such as Umberto D. and The Bicycle Thieves, concerns himself here with the idea of social responsibility, and how even within a group that is being persecuted, there is still a system in place where parties can believe that their money immunizes them from oppression. This is obviously true to an extent, but we all know how it turned out.