The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978)

The first time I came across the title of this film I had visions of its being some sort of fairy tale, but I couldn't have been more wrong.  A Palme d'or winner at Cannes, it is considered the Italian director Ermanno Olmi's masterpiece, but it is hard-going and at the best part of three hours, not an easy watch. It is set in Lombardy in Northern Italy at the end of the 19th Century and relates incidents from the lives of a number of families living together as tenant farmers.  There is no simple narrative; rather one is presented with vignettes acted out by the non-professional cast and there is not a lot to smile about.  The film covers poverty, birth, a wedding (with a honeymoon in a convent where the happy couple are made to take on a year-old child), tomato-growing in detail, and finally desperation as one family is forced to leave for the sin of having cut down a tree to make new clogs for their clever son who must walk six kilometres to and from school each day.  As a slice of peasant life it may be brilliant, but as satisfying viewing, forget about it.