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Flashback: The Tree of Wooden Clogs – Ermanno Olmi’s 1978 tale of poverty and Catholic beliefs

Olmi won the Palme d’Or for this subtle exposition of the lives of peasants in northern Italy. It’s far from a pastoral tale but it’s been criticised for the way the suffering families are shown to endure their lot

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A scene from The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978).

Cinema is the art of light and rarely has that quality been captured so beautifully as in Italian director Ermanno Olmi’s 1978 film The Tree of Wooden Clogs. His tale of Italian peasants living in abject poverty depicts the protagonists, and the natural world that makes up their lives, with the subtle skills of a master painter.

But the film, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is far from a gentle pastoral tale. A complex story told in a deceptively simple fashion, it covers issues such as feudalism, exploitation, poverty, revolution and, in a salient manner, the day-by-day expressions of Catholic beliefs.

Olmi, who is best known for Il Posto (1961), an examination of the empty nature of urban work, based this film on stories of peasant life he heard from his grandmother. He was inspired to make the film when he moved back to his roots in rural Lombardy, in the north of Italy. The story revolves around four tenant-farmer families in the late 1800s who live a hardscrabble life under the yoke of a landowner who treats them like slaves.

A still from the film.
A still from the film.
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