Myth and Reality

Myth and Reality

Introduction

The paper discusses two stories and their myths and realities in the stories. First is a movie by Taviani Brothers “La notte di San Lorenzo”, which means Night of the Shooting Stars. It is a movie released in 1982. Second is a story meaning loss of Marburg by Nuto Revelli (Miles, 2009).

Night of the Shooting Stars

The night of San Lorenzo is the ninth film directed by the Taviani brothers. Fresco of the Tuscan countryside in August of 1944, which is the setting for one of many incidents of ferocity and cruelty of our recent history, however, said watching the tenderness, good will, fear and heroism of ordinary people. The film is also the first opportunity for collaboration of the two directors with Nicola Piovani. The film was nominated at the 35th Cannes Film Festival, won the Special Jury Grand Prix and the Ecumenical Jury Prize. Written with Tonino Guerra, "in constant oscillation between personal memories and collective memory, news and fantasy, epic and elegy" the film is a reinterpretation of the Massacre of the Cathedral of San Miniato, where the attention goes to the thoughts, words and gestures of the "poor people" (Maynard, 2004).

As the film takes as its basis from a historical event, it is still based on a story of a mother to her child in an enchanted setting night and then the story acquires the characteristics of a fairy tale. The filter of memory that goes back to 'childhood events to submit a reworking delivering the epic and fantastic memories of that experience into an intermediate space between myth and reality (the elderly man reads from the beginning of the Homeric poems introduced in this atmosphere devoid of historical credibility, but full of charm derived from the collective).

For the filmmakers do not matter in terms of reconstruction of a tragic event they witnessed during childhood, but imagine the legendary transfiguration to emphasize certain fundamental values to them: the striving for utopia (expressed by the decision, to reach the Galvano Allied lines), the courage to challenge the common view and the weight of tradition (the disagreement between those who want to stay in the country and who wants to leave). The transmission of popular culture at the end of the preservation of a collective identity (the rhyme that is handed down from mother to daughter) and the consequent ability to story-telling in the maintenance of memory (the same story, told from the witness now to adult daughter). The night of San Lorenzo is also the Taviani a way to draw inspiration from the past to speak to this, in the sense of the need to reiterate, in every historical epoch, the pressure for change and discovery.

The night of San Lorenzo is one of the best films of the Taviani brothers, that it put in place their most relevant proceedings style: the chorus of the narrative (there is a leading player, but all the characters involved in almost equal measure the construction of the story), the dislocation in the same frame of masses of people ...