Product Description

This powerful true tale of one boy's struggle out of isolation and silence is perfectly captured on film by the renowed Taviani brothers

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36448 in DVD
• Brand: Genius
• Released on: 1998-06-10
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 114 minutes

Amazon.com
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani first garnered critical attention with this adaptation of Gavino Ledda's autobiography, winning both the Golden Palm and the Critics Prize at Cannes in 1977. Gavino's father pulls him out of elementary school at the age of 6 to force him into the life of a Sardinian shepherd, often severely beating him. Yet Gavino's illiteracy spurs him on to eventually earn a university degree on Sardinian dialects. And it's his journey from the cruel, solitary, animal world of shepherding under the yoke of his tyrant Padre, to that of a writer and a linguist that forms the body of this tale. But more, it's a showcase for the talents of the Taviani brothers, whose style keeps us distant from their subject, like a child watching an ant colony.

There's a moment in Padre Padrone ("Father Master" for those who want to be clued in to the film's political rumblings from the get-go) that typifies the best and worst it has to offer. Gavino, having had a violent argument with his father, decides to leave home to keep the peace, but must retrieve a valise that's under the bed his father is currently sitting on. This brings the top of his head conveniently close to Padre, whose hand absently moves to pat him on the noggin, but instead raises in a fascistic fist of rage. The ambivalence of the gesture is pointed, and well taken. But to make the point, the Tavianis have abstracted their characters past all recognition. There is no time in the film when a scene is not a carefully controlled abstraction. Now the characters are all gestures and tableaux, swallowed by pastoral landscapes, markers in its historical sweep rather than flesh-and-blood people. While this might appeal to an audience's sense of intellectual cool, it also deprives them of the richer joys of being allowed under a character's skin. --Jim Gay

From the Back Cover
This powerful true tale of one boy's struggle out of isolation and silence is perfectly captured on film by the renowned Taviani brothers, Paolo and Vittorio (Night Sun; Good Morning, Babylon). Based on the autobiography by Gavino Ledda, who at the age of six was taken from school into the mountains where his father enslaved him as a shepherd. Gavino eventually broke free discovering the outside world and his own identity within it. A Grand Prize winner at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival, Padre Padrone is an incredible story of perseverance and is "and exhilarating example of filmmaking." (Chicago Reader)

Customer Reviews

Fox Lorber DVD...experience the worst DVD transfer
a true story, about living under unbelievable paternal cruelty. the landscape must be beutiful, but this dvd transfer manages to obscure all that. this is the type of product you get when vulgar and dishonest people are involved in its making; this becomes more apparent when it involve the production of art-related materials, where ultimate crftmanship is required. I hope that a remastered version well be published sometimes in the future. avoid this dvd and all Fox Lorber dvd.

MY FATHER , MY MASTER...
Here is a landmark film of the seventies , a film with a great dramatic intensity , it has its roots in neo-realism yet so beautiful and lyrical. The 5 stars are for Paolo and Vittorio Taviani , Omero Antonuti and the rest of the crew. For Fox Lorber a zero on a transfer job so poorly done , the VHS tape plays better; they did the same with "Ran" , by Kurosawa . Let us hope someone will hear our voices screaming bloody murder , and hoping for a decent digital transfer on these and similar "butchered" masterpieces.

Well-done, some strange moments if you don't object
No matter how preserving, redemptive, or moving, this 1977 Cannes Festival winner comes across, it has it's weird moments. Padre Padrone is translated to Father, the Boss. The story encompasses abuse, brutality, bestiality, religion, oppression, etc. The directors, the Taviani brothers, are intent at depicting this barbaric existence.

Based on the autobiographical story of Gavino Ledda, an illiterate sheepherder who escaped his father's rule, joined the military, was self-taught and became professor of linguistics.

Gavino is hauled away from school at the age of 7 by his father who needs his son to watch the sheep, and that his education will come at 18 years of age. He orders the boy to live in the fields day and night. We see the abusive treatment his father imposes and we are privy to some sickening bestiality moments (by the younger children who are also sheepherders).

But the childhood scenes are quickly relayed to Gavino years later, as a young man. And there are more strange interactions within his family. Too many scenes are left to your imagination as to what is happening or we are left with little clue as to why.

When he escapes life as a sheepherder, Gavino joins the military. It is here that his speech doesn't compare to the others he becomes self-educated in phonetics and he becomes a radio operator, I believe it is. Then, he goes back home to the village and confronts his father. Here, we get a better understanding of the conflict to come. This review is from the videotape.

.....Marrianne Rizzuto