NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS, THE

Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (1977's “Padre Padrone”) made their cinematic debut in 1954 with a short film based on the 1944 German massacre of San Miniato, their own village near Pisa. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS revives the Taviani brothers' artistic interpretation of Tuscany in 1944. On the night of San Lorenzo, August 10, a woman wishes on a shooting star, a Tuscan tradition on this date. Silhouetted in her darkened bedroom, the woman whispers endearments to her loved one and relates her memories of another night of San Lorenzo almost 40 years ago, when she was six. Her townspeople were forced to make a choice: Take “safe” shelter in the cathedral, as ordered by the Germans blowing up their homes, or escape to find the American front lines. Galvano (Omero Antonutti, the father in “Padre Padrone”) convinces one group to follow his lead into the hills. The 6-year-old girl is part of the group fleeing in the night, experiencing the ending of the war in a mixture of adventure and horror. The villagers are made up of fascists as well as partisans and their own civil war looms larger than the world war in battle and death scenes that transcend reality, crystallizing into rhapsodic, unfading images.