The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Two years in a row, the Palme d’Or went to Italian films: the Taviani brothers’ Padre Padrone in 1977 and this splendid rural epic from Ermanno Olmi. Like La Dolce Vita, this was a three-hour fresco, but hopeful, not skeptical. A village of farmers, under the boot of their master, sacrifice to send a bright child to school. That child might have been Olmi, who’s been making films since 1953 without losing his love of the land and the peasants who till it.
sex, lies, and videotape

This year the two top contenders were prime examples of the burgeoning American independent-film phenomenon: Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, a portrait of a multiracial American neighborhood on the verge of exploding, and Steven Soderbergh’s romantic comedy about sexual dysfunction and deception. Soderbergh won the top prize and Lee got nothing, stoking a rancorous, racially tinged debate. Both films did well when they were released in the States that summer, and both sparked mini-genres — the angry black drama and the subtly winning indie slice of middle-class mores. They announced the arrival of two hard-working, hard-to-pigeonhole auteurs.












