I Watch Films: The Night Of The Shooting Stars

 

The Night Of The Shooting Stars

In Italy a woman tells a story to her child about The Night Of The Shooting Stars or The Night Of San Lorenzo*. In 1944, during World War II, a young man is brought into the church from out in the fields where he was hiding, where he marries his pregnant fiancé. The Germans are retreating and the Americans advancing. In town it is revealed the Germans plan to explode some of the buildings and have told the townspeople to wait in the church where they will be safe. They discuss this and half of them decide to stay and the other half to leave and try and seek shelter with the Americans. The groom leaves, the bride and her mother stay.

The party who leave wander the countryside, constantly getting distracted and lost, rumours of the Americans and Germans spreading. Back in town the bishop hold communion; however the local fascists blow up the church. The groom returns to discover his bride dead, and returns to the group in the country.

They wander some more, eventually coming across partisans who are trying to harvest the crops before the fascists can, and take the food with them when they retreat. They join them, occasionally hiding from planes, as the partisans promise to get them safely away if they help. That night there are shooting stars, a night of wishes, which everyone except one young girl forgets about in the confusion.

The next day the fascists arrive to try and take the grain and a confusing battle erupts with partisans, refugees and fascists taking cover amongst the fields. At one point a fascist is about to kill the girl and she repeats a rhyme against fear; mirroring the rhyme a line of ancient Roman soldiers appear and throw spears at them. The battle ends, brutally and farcically.

The survivors escape to a farm where several characters resolve their various storylines. As the mother finishes the tale she repeats the rhyme her mother told her that, apparently, saved her, revealing herself as the child. This is a fabulist film of the absurdity of war from the point of view of those caught up unexpectedly. It is farce and tragedy, the ridiculousness of the mundane, the horrific and the fantastic all together. Italian with subtitles.

Watch This: Clever, darkly comic, lightly tragic fantasy of real war
Don’t Watch This: People wander the countryside pointlessly, get killed, does not reflect the real events it’s based on

* The Roman Catholic feast day of Saint Lawrence (San Lorenzo) is August 10, which coincides with the annual Perseid meteor shower; thus they are also known as the tears of St Lawrence.