To Forget Venice [Dimenticare Venezia] ***** (1979, Mariangela Melato, Eleonora Giorgi, Erland Josephson) – Classic Movie Review 8603

Story-writer/ co-producer/ director Franco Brusati’s 1979 drama To Forget Venice [Dimenticare Venezia] is an exquisitely performed, delicately told story of two mixed gay couples spending a weekend in the country.

A brother, Nicky (Erland Josephson), returns to his family home to visit his sister in the Italian countryside, bringing along his young male lover. With the sister in the house are two women, one of whom, Anna (Mariangela Melato), looks after the farm.

There in the house, an opera diva, the woman who brought three of them up, is dying, and they are prompted to pass the time in re-examining their lives, seen through flashbacks.

To Forget Venice [Dimenticare Venezia] is a poignant, telling, superb movie, based on a story by Franco Brusati, which was deservedly Oscar nominated as Best Foreign Language Film in 1979. By rights, it should have won.

The main cast are Erland Josephson, Mariangela Melato, Eleonora Giorgi, David Pontremoli, Nerina Montagnani, Siria Betti, Anne Caudry, Hella Petri, Paolo Roversi, Fred Personne, Armando Brancia and Peter Boom.

To Forget Venice [Dimenticare Venezia], is directed by Franco Brusati, runs 110 minutes, is made by Rizzoli Film, Action Films and Gaumont, is distributed by Cineriz (1979) (Italy) and Gaumont (1980) (France), written by Jaja Fiastri, based on a story by Franco Brusati, shot by Romano Albani, produced by Franco Brusati and Claudio Grassetti, and scored by Benedetto Ghiglia.

It was nominated for one Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film for Italy. It won the David di Donatello Award for Best Film (Miglior Film), tied with The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) and Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979). It was a very good year for Italian films.

The English title would be better as Forgetting Venice.

Roger Ebert got it hopelessly wrong and said ‘To Forget Venice doesn’t feel like a story, it feels like an idea for a story, and that’s the problem with it.’

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8603

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