The Night of San Lorenzo Director: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani Italy| 1981. English subtitles. Colour. 106 min. Book cinema tickets A distinctive and restless force in Italian cinema for more than 35 years, the brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani mastered an eloquent stylistic bridge between Rossellini’s stringency and Fellini’s braggadocio. 1977’s Padre, Padrone was the film that put the Tavianis on the map, but Night of the San Lorenso remains their premier achievement. Fantastic and episodic, this saga of Italian villagers roaming the Nazi-occupied countryside searching for the liberating armies combines doom and magic and absurdism with spectacular confidence. Many of the Tavianis’ films evoke the simplistic voice of folklore, but this mid-career masterpiece (told in flashback by its six-year-old protagonist, now grown into parenthood) is a traumatic oral history seen form the inside out. Director: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani Italy| 1981. English subtitles. Colour. 106 min.