Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1970)

In the late 1930s, in Ferrara, a group of young friends get together for afternoons of tennis and happy times. Some of them are Jewish and a rising tide of Fascism has imposed increasingly anti-Semitic restrictions in their lives. Barred from regular tennis clubs, they go to play at the grand, walled estate owned by the Finzi-Contini, a wealthy, intellectual and sophisticated Jewish family. The two young Finzi-Contini, Alberto and his sister Micol, have organized a tennis tournament. Oblivious to the threats around them, life still seems to be sunny at the large Finzi-Contini estate, keeping the rest of the world at bay.

Among the visitors there is a man vying for the beautiful, tall and blond, Micol Finzi-Contini. Her middle class Jewish, childhood friend is Giorgio, who feels entitled to her heart. A series of flashbacks show how Giorgio used to wait outside the walls of the estate, hoping for a glimpse of Micol. As teenagers they became fast friends. Now as adults,
they enjoy their mutual company and Micol gives Giorgio special attention. Escaping a sudden downpour in a gazebo, Giorgio tries to touch her, but she rejects him. Alberto, who has a fragile health, enjoys a close friendship with Bruno Malnate, a darkly handsome gentile with socialist sympathies.
Giorgio's father considers the Finzi-Contini so different that they don’t even seem to be Jewish. Wealth, privilege and generations of intellectual and social position have bred them into a family as proud as it is vulnerable. The other Jews in the town react to Mussolini's edicts in various ways: Giorgio is enraged; his father is philosophical. But the Finzi-Continis hardly seem to know, or care, what is happening.

Giorgio, who is about to graduate, becomes a frequent visitor to the Finzi-Contini's villa where he is allowed to use their extensive library. He is in love with Micol, and she seems to return his feeling, but unexpectedly she leaves to stay in Venice with her uncles. On her return Micol changes, coldly rejecting any show of affection from Giorgio. Instead she carries on affair with Bruno Malnate, a man she claims to despise as too vulgar, crude, and leftist for her tastes. Peeking through a window Giorgio discovers Bruno and Micol naked together. Heartbroken Giorgio is comforted by his father.

The political events close in. A journey to visit his brother Ernesto in Grenoble exposes Giorgio to news of the Nazi persecution, but he returns to Ferrara. With the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Bruno is recruited and sent to the Russian front. By 1943 all the young Jews who used to visit the Garden of the Finzi-Continis have been arrested. Malnate has been killed in the Russian front.

By the time the frail and sick Alberto dies, Italian soldiers are hunting down and rounding up the Jews of Ferrara. The Finzi-Continis are abruptly taken away from their contentment and illusory isolation. Separated from her parents Micol and her frail and distraught grandmother are placed in a former classroom. They are surprised to find Giorgio’s father. Anxiously she asks him about Giorgio. He tells her that he hopes that Giorgio and the rest of his family has made it abroad. The fate of the Jews of Ferrara is being deported to the concentration camps. Giorgio's father hopes that at least they won't be separated.

Images shown happy days of Nicole, Alberto, Ernesto and Bruno playing tennis and now the empty tennis court. the sequences is accompanied by the Kel Maleh, a Jewish lament for the death.