 movies we can learn from. I'm Jay Fidel, this is Stink Tech and we're here with George Cassin and we're talking about movies we can learn from and the movie we're going to learn from today is The Garden of the Finsie Contini which was the Academy Award for Foreign Language Film in 1972 and it is a classic. It is a classic and it is also very powerful and it is also very educational. I'm going to talk about it today and we're going to talk about how it originated and what it stood for and just how true it is because there are elements of truth. Maybe a lot of elements of truth in this movie. George, tell us the environment here. Where did it take place? When did it take place? Who are the essential characters of this movie? It's in Ferrara, Italy, which is just south of Milan. It's a community of city south of Milan. It's north of Bologna. It's 200 miles north of Rome. So now we know where it is. The time frame is 1938 to 1943 in Italy and it's a family that's in in Ferrara. Then they live on this street but their property goes all the way back into the rural area and they have this huge mansion and huge property in Ferrara and in 1938 their two children are in a tennis club in Ferrara but when the fascists start taking over they bar those two kids from the tennis club. They can't do that. They're so used to playing tennis. They invite all their friends that they were playing tennis with at that club to their home where they have at their own tennis court where they practice. This is how the movie begins when all these friends are coming to the gate and they come in and they start playing tennis with this Alberto and Nicole, right? So who wrote this thing? Bassani by this Italian Jewish author. It was sort of semi-autobiographical because he was from Ferrara and it was very similar to what he had transpired and he had experienced in his own life. So this was a sort of semi-biographic. I forgot his friend. His last name was Bassani. It's Giorgio Bassani. Oh, Giorgio, another Giorgio Bassani, like my name. I never met a Giorgio I didn't like. Well, okay. George Bush, okay. No, never mind. George Washington. Okay. So bottom line is here. They start having banter between the young people. They're talking and Nicole is just she's absolutely beautiful. She's a beautiful woman. The actress is a beautiful woman. Beautiful tall, thin and all the interplay between all the tennis players. And Alberto is the brother and he's also a good-looking young guy and he's got a close friend, a Gianperto Malnate. And as this thing progresses, one of the things that is like a plot, semi-plot, is the interaction of Nicole with these guys, right? Few guys. And there is Giorgio, who's from another Jewish family in Ferrara, also prominent, but not quite as prominent as the Fienzi Constines. And he knew her from grade school and he was in love with her from a young age and he's still in love with her. And she, he's pushing for her to be in love with him, but she says you're like my brother. I don't, I can't really feel that close with you. And then Malnate, Gianperto, Piero Malnate, who's very close friends with her brother Alberto, she sort of talks to him at next to the tennis court and he says to her, you know, really, you live really into men, are you? And she says, not men like you, because you're too frank, you're leftist politically and you're too hairy. So she's pretty much putting him down. So I, my life, I don't understand sometimes women that say one thing and do something. Now she's teasing him. But that's the impression I had. She's teasing him and and she's lording over him because of her privilege and her wealth. Let's talk about this fantastic house. Yeah. It's in another, it's from another part of Italy that where they filmed that house. It's a, it's an, I've got the region and the house and the yard is, the great gardens are filmed in another part of Italy. So it's not really in Ferrara. They're using the set. It's going to be in a different place. But this house, it was from the family of Saxony or something. It was, it was the royal family's mansion, one of the royal families. And this house as an architectural historian, an architectural student, this house is phenomenal. This is a beautiful, you know, house, just gorgeous, gorgeous house. So you see that and then you see the tennis courts. And then her family, her father, her mother, her grandmother, they all come toward the, they're walking toward the tennis court. And you see, they're all very elegant, you know, affluent family, elegant family educated. You can see that they're high, high stuff, you know, high level, like an aristocracy in Italy. And this, as this movie progresses, you tell me when I'm going on too much, between 1938 and 1943, things start to turn. Let's, let's hold up on that. First, we have to define who, who these people are and why, and why Bassani is writing about them. And I took the liberty of writing, of reading some of his writings in his book. And the book is written in 1957. And you write it with, at least in part autobiographical, he uses the first person throughout the book. So you know, a lot of the things he's, he's writing down are his own experiences. And he tells you, this is, it's almost like, you know, Proust is first person, but he's telling you the story of somebody else. And the somebody else is this family, which really existed. This family existed. These characters existed. And so he tells you about what, what motivated him, you know, to, to write the book, to bring his recollections of that family into the fore. And I guess people liked the book. It was a best seller. Although it was written in Italian, and it's, it's got a different music to it than the book written in English, I must say. Maybe it's just a quality of the translation. When he talks about the trips they took, this is post war, you know, in the 50s, I guess, the trips they took around Italy, and they bring their friends and family. And I guess he was somewhat privileged also, and, and see these old, you know, palaces, like the, like the one you're talking about in Ferrara. And he talks about Ferrara. He talks about, you know, going with his family and, and kids and, and being so impressed by these, you know, these, these country places and assholes along the way. And he talks about how one day, one afternoon, he saw this one house, this one palace, and said, ah, this is just like the garden of the Benzicantini. I'm going to, I'm going to write a book about that. And he knows, he knows the fame of those characters, and he puts the characters in the book. So then people liked it. So they made a movie of it. And I believe, I'm not sure this, maybe you know, I thought there were two movies by the same name, but no, no, there was one movie. And the movie that you and I saw was that movie, but it was remastered later in the 90s. It was made into color in the 90s. And so the movie that's on Netflix is actually the original movie, but fixed up. And that mansion house was really quite something. And, and the whole family, I mean, there were three, four generations lived in that house. And, and they were, they were privileged beyond description. They couldn't have anything they wanted. They wanted to have a tennis party. They could have a tennis party. They want to invite their non-Jewish friends over. Everybody would be delighted. You had to take a bicycle from one end of the property to the other. Because there was so much land involved in the middle of this town, Ferrari, you know, the front gate was, was just an ordinary door. It's like, you know, it was like the Shangri-La, you know, you open the door and behold, it's a forest in there and a bicycle pass and tennis courts. And you couldn't even see the end of the property. And it was, it was all surrounded by a big wall. Remember the wall, there were several walls involved, sling them in or maybe walling others out. And that's, and that's the, you know, the statement of it, right? That's the statement of how they lived. The level of privilege in wealth was really extraordinary. And the, and, you know, they had a certain amount of Jewishness in there, but mostly they were just really wealthy. And that happened, that existed in Italy at the time. Okay, now let's go to the dynamic. Stuff happens in this movie. All of a sudden, a dark cloud passes over all of that. And how is it revealed? What happens? Well, Giorgio, that was in love with Nicole, I remember this thing. He goes to the library where he's been studying poetry or whatever. And he's told that he can't state it in his seat. He said, well, I can move to another seat. And he said, no, the guard or whatever tells him, you can't be in this library at all. So he goes then to the library director. And he says, what is this? And he says, the library director says, it's over my head. It's coming from above. And then Giorgio says, you have a family, don't you? He says, yeah, I have a family. In other words, these fascists are controlling things, right? And little by little. What do you mean by that? That was really a very telling remark. You have a family, is he saying you and your family ought to get out of town no matter how much money is involved? Is he saying that he has a family too? And he has to be careful of his family. Maybe he's saying it in two ways. We all have our families. We cannot take liberties with the Germans. The Nazis are here and your family is at risk. I think that was it. But you're right. It was a very important statement he made in his office there. You may be right, Jay, because when his brother, his younger brother, Giorgio's younger brother, goes to France to Grenoble to study. And then he visits his brother with money from his father to help the brother, the younger brother. And then the younger brother says, why don't you stay here in Grenoble? And he says, no, I can't because I've got to go back. I have my family in the older, she's the older brother. I got my family back in Ferrara. So you may be right that there's sort of a double thing to this. But little by little, there's the freedoms that these families have in Ferrara are being whittled away one by one by one. You remember the transportation progression? The first thing is you couldn't have a car anymore. You had to give up your car. You couldn't drive. And that was the end of that. And then you had to drive. You had to go on the streetcar. But soon enough, you couldn't go on the streetcar anymore. And so forth. And at the end of the day, you rode a bicycle. Bicycles played a big role in this movie, but not necessarily because they loved riding bicycles. They had to. Yeah, exactly. So basically, I mean, I saw this movie in 1970. I saw the trailer. And it really hit me home, you know, because just to get off and decide, my own family back in Turkey in World War One had a very similar kind of living situation with an acreage next to the big mansion. And I know everything that transpired with them, with the art being stolen and half of them dying and the rest having to just run with the shirts on their back. So I was sensitized to this issue. So I saw this movie and I always remembered it. So when we talked a number of weeks ago, you brought up Gardner the Fizzy Counties. I said, yes, let's do that. Because it's sort of even 50 years later, it's still I still remembered that movie. So this movie. So basically, it's, it's, it's, as we said, whittling away. And the interesting thing for me is that George Joe's father, Jewish father, he was, I think an attorney, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, he was also a member of the Fascist Party before Yuduce came in. He was more concerned on the conservative side, because they were against Communists. And even the Fizzy Counties, they were sort of more conservative. I mean, I don't know if they were actually involved with the Fascist Party, but they were in the ruling class. Exactly. They were conservative. They were, you know, the right side of things. And they, they, they didn't get, they didn't achieve all that wealth by being, by being liberals or communists. And so that, you know, you, and it goes back to your family, the point in your family is that, here are these people, and they're privileged, and they have anything and everything they want. They're in the top of the heap. And they, and their family has been that way for hundreds of years. You know, this is, it's an historical privilege. It came, you know, from, I don't know, the renaissance. Anyway, what's, what is remarkable, and we can never forget World War II for this, these people were at the top of the heap, and in very short order within a year to maybe they were reduced to the bottom of the heap with everybody else. They, they didn't have wealth. Ultimately, they didn't have their palace. They didn't have anything, zero. And it was so traumatic to watch them have to deal with the loss of, of all these things which they took for granted and be ruined, you know, in quick time. That happened all over Europe, but certainly with people of this caliber, it was particularly, it was, it was traumatic. Exactly. And that's, that's, you see that as the movie progresses between 38 and 43. And in, in the final, when they're taken, taken away from their home, you know, Alberto had already died of a fever, but they're taken away. And here you even have the grandmother who was like this, you know, aristocratic grandmother who was already probably in her 80s or 90s. They took her away and then Nicole and her are separated from the rest of the family. So they, so it just reminds you of a Dutch shop and, you know, a book and wall and, and Auschwitz, you know, where they, they're taking, they're putting these people into little rooms, you know, and where, where are they headed? Where are they headed for, you know? So I was very, remember, remember the scene. Yeah. Toward the end, where the, I don't think they were Italian. I think they were German, Nazi people, because the Nazis had a presence in Italy. Oh, yes. I remember learning that the first time I saw the movie, it struck me funny that it was, you know, Muslim, he was a bad guy and he was a fascist and he allowed Hitler and, and the Nazis to come into Italy and do this kind of stuff. Anyway, it was a perfect situation because the Nazis wanted this property and they were rounding up the Jews and they went into this house and all these generations of people are in the house. And it's like, you know, the clock hits well noon. Everything stops. It's, it's not slow motion. It's completely snapshot stopped. And they're all frozen while the Nazis are, are dragging them out of there. Actually not dragging. They're saying, you have to come with us now. Okay. And they were driven to a schoolhouse and they were put in a classroom for young kids. You know, what there were no young kids in there, maybe they were, there were family members in there. But bottom line is this was a really small, tight little room in a schoolhouse, which they probably had not visited, didn't know anything about it. And they're all stuffed in this room. And, and that's pretty much where the movie ends. And you have to ask yourself, what now stuff in the schoolroom, these people are really not not equipped to deal with being jammed into a schoolroom against their will. Everything scripted from them, even, you know, their clothing where they weren't even permitted to pack nothing. And you say, wow, what, what are they thinking? They, they must be in total trauma. Exactly. To have this happen to them. And that was the classroom that Nicole was in when she was a child. It was okay. Right. That's also the play of the director. He did this, you know, Victoria De Sica, I think. Yeah. I mean, it was, I mean, that was the classroom she was in. And before that, George Joe was on the streets and they took him away and, and to the police station and he, they were beating him up. And then he ran away. And then at the end, his father, that's still there in Ferrara, in the same room in the school is Nicole and her grandmother. He says that George Joe and his mother and, and, and that little sister, they, they've escaped, you know, they've left, they've gone to France or wherever, but he's still there, you know, and then Malnate and we'll get into Malnate and, and Nicole too, which we didn't really get into. He died in Russia. He was a gent, he wasn't Jewish. He was a Italian Gentile. They sent him to Russia and died. But do you want to get into that scene with Nicole and, and Gian Perro Malnate? I mean, basically to me, that was also very profound because George Joe is still, who's still in love with, with Nicole. He jumps the fence where she had put these little nails so that people could jump their, their wall to get into their, into their property and she probably had boyfriends. I don't know what her friends, you know, from the outside and he goes and he jumps the fence and he goes all the way to the house and he knows where Nicole's bedroom is and he climbs the wall and lo and behold in bed naked, Nicole is naked with Gian Perro Malnate, the guy she was telling, you're too hairy, you're leftist and you're too frank. So to me, I mean, I guess women sometimes do that, right? I mean, they say one thing. She played with men. She played with men and she was, she was beautiful, but she played with men and she certainly played with him. And you know, I, you know, hearing you talk about it, I realized that what the movie does is it introduces you to them individually. The best movies are the ones where you get to know the players really well and so well that you get to see them change right in front of your eyes. And here's a woman who was, you know, I don't want to say snooty, but manipulative and she was arrogant and that that was my perception. You know, beautiful women can be all of that. And she played with men and one day she was scripted of everything. And so, and it makes it, it makes it so much more powerful when you get to know the players and you get to see the history of this family unfolding, unraveling and going hither and yonder and dying, what have you. I want to read you, George, the last paragraph of the prologue of the book itself, which sort of stuck me. He went in his travels on the tour in that area to the tomb. You know, these people existed, the things he continues actually existed. It's clear in his book. My heart aches never before it's a thought that in that tomb erected, it seemed, guaranteed the perpetual repose of the man who commissioned it, his and his descendants, only one descendant among all the Finzi continuities I had known and loved. He knew them. He knew them. Yeah. Yeah. I had managed to gain that repose. In fact, the only one buried there in the tomb, the big, garish tomb, tombs can be garish. The only one buried there is Alberto, the oldest son. There really wasn't Alberto, really was an Alberto, right? Who died in 1942 of limpo granuloma. So that's what killed him. It's impressive that here's a book written in 1957, and the author has the expertise to tell us about this. Whereas for Nicole, Miko, that was her name in the book here, Miko, the second child, the daughter, and for her father and Professor Hermano and her mother, Signora Olga and Senora Regina, Senora Olga's ancient, paralytic mother who was taken away by the Nazis. They were all deported to Germany in the autumn of 1943. And this is the final words. Who could say if they found any sort of burial at all? Only one in the tomb was the old man. The tomb was for the family, but most of the family was killed. So none of these Finsi Continis lived past going to Germany. They probably died in the concentration camps, and their bodies were burned in those guest gyms. I mean, this movie doesn't really get into that last section, which leaves you sort of hanging. You did some more research to discover what really happened to this family, which is death. I mean, this is another horrible Holocaust thing. And this is a very pertinent movie right now because you have people here in America who don't really understand how things can turn very quickly against the minorities. Now, you've got Kanye screaming and yelling about this and that, but he's an African. And if things change, for the worst, him and Candice Owens and all these others, they may be targeted as well. There's very powerful Jewish people that are supporting Trump, that have put sort of Trump. And he's not your typical Republican. Everything that comes out of is really sort of worrisome. Even his 12 years, another 12 years, and what's going on now with his tweeting and bullshitting and all. This is worrisome. So this movie shows you how the cataclysms that are possible when you lose democracy, when you lose humanity and you lose civility and where this can go. Because if you look at January 6, when those people, that wasn't the first time. I remember Miami-Dade Board of Elections in the 2000 elections, when all these people, you know, conservatives, they swarmed that Miami-Dade Board of Elections so that they would stop the cats, the voting. That was similar to what happened on January 6 at a smaller level. So when you lose democracy, you're in trouble. And this movie, I wish the movie had as horrible as it is and carried it further. And then you would have realized what happened to these lovely people that you're liking, you know, as much as she played with men, you know, she was likable, you know, the whole family was likable. And then you see what happened to them. So there's some real lessons for us. Like you say, movies we can learn from. This is something we can learn from, you know. As I alluded to, my own family, when you had the fascist German allies took over in Turkey and Ottoman Empire, you saw what happened there with the Greeks and the Armenians and the Levis and whatever. And the same, this whole thing in Europe was, there wasn't only Jews, a lot of holes, you know, was mainly Jews that ate it. But there were others as well, you know. So when you lose that thing, something's really, really amiss. Is it my imagination or is there more literature, more documentaries, more articles and so forth happening now, as if to make the point that, you know, when you lose democracy, it's not like you go about your business just the way you did before. When you lose democracy, you lose your civil rights. You lose public safety. And the worst people are running things and they don't care about your safety. And they can take you away in the middle of the night. That's what's always happened. When you get autocracy, they can take you away and kill you and murder you. There was a segment on 60 Minutes Last Weekend about Lithuania when the Nazis came to Lithuania. And it was, you know, early in the genocide and they killed, I don't remember the percentage, but a really high percentage of the Jews of Lithuania. And the Jews in Lithuania were a high percentage of the citizens of Lithuania. Half of Lithuania was Jewish and they killed 70% or something like that of the Jews who lived there. And the story on 60 Minutes was about their books and their writings, which they treasured, you know, and the remaining Jewish community was hiding all these books. They knew the Nazis would burn them, take them, what have it, and artwork and the like. And so they kept it underground. They kept it in the most remarkable places and saved some of it. And ultimately, an organization was formed in New York after the war to preserve this. Why is it so important? It's important because the people themselves were killed. The percentage of people, the number of people in Lithuania, it was really hideous. We don't know. We don't hear that. And this segment was an important lesson about the numbers. And you say to yourself, what about those guys, the proud boys and the like, who don't take democracy seriously and who could just as easily allow democracy, who want democracy to fail and who would be happy to see bigotry prevail? They don't realize how it was in the Holocaust and in Europe for all minorities. And so I feel that it's been 80 years. I think people have forgotten. The world has largely forgotten about this. I think it's a real service from filmmakers and novelists and documentary makers and historians to remind us exactly what kind of brutality was happening at what scale. And this movie fits in there. This movie helps us remember. But you know, George, you and I, we don't need help to remember. It's shocking. It's disgusting. It's shocking to an emotional level, a high emotional level. But there's so many people in this country have no clue. They were not taught about this in school. They deny it just as they deny climate change and they deny democracy and all liberal things. So I think the movie is valuable to remind you and me. Hopefully it'll reach further out than you and me and people will appreciate it for the examination of life in a country-fied Italy in those years, just as it was happening in other countries in Europe, you know, in Germany and France, of course, in Eastern Europe where people were being murdered at a fantastic scale. And maybe it helps. Maybe it helps for us to remind ourselves and remind others. Do you remember January 6th they had that Hangman's news? They were going to literally talking about killing people, even some of their own conservatives that weren't going along with what they said was the steal. They wanted to kill and when they swarmed the capital, they were going after people or anybody who was part of the system. They wanted to just over. I've read about Hitler in 1923 when he had that beer bus when my father and my grandmother in the end, when they left Lemmingen after seeing him in that square. And he literally took over that beer hall or something. I don't know if you remember. That was sort of the harbinger of what was to come. And who was sort of in 1923 that 10 years later he would take over. So this January 6th is a harbinger of what could happen if we're not aware. I agree with you. The reference to the news is very important because who's to say that the news was simply an icon? Who's to say that those weapons were just play toys? It could have gone wrong at any moment. And if it had continued, the chances of it going wrong were that much greater. And Pence could have been killed. Others could have been Nancy Pelosi could have been killed. And so it's very troubling how close we came to a full-on, full-tilt massacre. And it's troubling also that, yes, in the context of a coup d'etat. And what would we be doing now? What would we be doing two years later? We would not have public safety. We would not be assured that we could go to sleep at night and so forth. So you've got to worry about that. And I hope we don't have that problem again. I hope that the midterms change things in some way. But I think we have to be very mindful of what happened in the 30s. And this literature, these movies, these documentaries, the Ken Burns series, and what Rachel Maddow is doing now in her podcast, we have to understand what it was like in order to avoid repeating it. So what would you give this movie in terms of a rating? I know you liked it. 10 plus. I mean, it just, the way it was handled, it was, it's sort of in pieces, you know, little by little, you don't really expect, well, you know how it may end, right? But as it's progressing, it's still a shock at the end, where they, when they come into that mansion and they take these people, including the elderly grandmother, and take them away, you know, you actually visually see this, is what they're taking them away, you know, from this existence. And it's the dichotomy there between where they were and what they end up, you know, it's like, I think it's a lesson for anybody who thinks that they're above being targeted. Because, you know, once these crazies take over, they can decide who they want to target. And if they don't, I mean, I can see if those crazies take over, they'll be targeting all segments of our society, right, of our current society at all different economic and financial levels, you know, it's just scary. And your point a little while ago is very telling in this movie, when this happened to them, it's like after watching frame by frame, they were in a state of complete non-belief and complete shock, you know, just staring out at history unfolding around them and being pushed from one life to toward Auschwitz and death. And they didn't know what was happening. They had no idea. None of them had an idea about what was going on. They just, they couldn't even speak of it. It was transformed into objects almost immediately. And it was, it's very troubling. George Yeo and his father early in this movie had a big argument because George Yeo, the young guy, you know, the son, he's telling his father what's, what's happening in the father who had been a member of the pre-Duche fascist party was telling him, you know, it's not that bad. We're only, we're only losing. He was talking to his son and said, there isn't that much we're losing. It's just minor things. We can still survive. But that's all. That's core. That, that is a core moment in the movie. Precise. We're not worried about losing democracy. We're not worried about these fascists coming for us. Exactly. But, but what a miscalculation. See, I've talked about Dr. Myers that my parents' physician and friend and his wife, they were friends. And he was smart enough to get out and he first, he went to Romania. But you know, the, that's another point is that these people in the movie were not smart enough to get out. They never addressed the problem. They never left town except accidentally. And the essential family remained there in the headlights. Exactly. You're in the headlights. And, and you know, George, that goes for most people. Six million people died in those camps. They were in the headlights. They, they didn't know how to, you know, protest or, or, you know, push back on it or even run away. And the, and the number of people who ran away was a small percentage. Most of them didn't know what to do and didn't do anything and died. See, my family never forget that. So let me, let me, we have to get off. Let me, let me just read it. I agree with you 10 plus. And I think this is a very nutritious movie for our time. And our time is not yet resolved. Relative success in the midterms or not. We still have the threat of what you and I were worried about before. And what we continue to be worried about now. Well, thank you, George. George Cason, looking forward to our next discussion. We'll talk about what movie that is. And I want to tell you again how much I enjoy our shows together. Thank you. And we'll do it. Yep. Thank you. Aloha, George.