The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Tales and Songs

Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs deservedly won the Palme d'Or at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival over such disparate films as The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Coming Home, Empire of Passion, Midnight Express, Pretty Baby, The Shout, An Unmarried Woman, Violette Nozière, and Who'll Stop the Rain. I am not overly enamored with neorealism, so a three hour film about Lombardy peasants working for a landowner in 1898 would seemingly not float my boat. However, Olmi's unobtrusive craft and compelling story had me glued to the screen for the entire film. Olmi synchs his film with the naturalistic and Catholic rhythms of life that feudal peasants lived for centuries. The tragic ending of the film augurs the modern era and the death of that way of life.

Olmi seems to have been inspired by the mystical Christian neorealism of Roberto Rossellini. As in the work of Rossellini and fellow nutty Christian Robert Bresson, Olmi use non-professional actors for verisimilitude. The adherence to the numerous rituals of Catholicism both bonds the peasantry and provides spiritual comfort. This is also true when the peasant families congregate in a barn to swap songs and tales before bed. Running parallel to these rites are those of nature. Indeed, The Tree of Wooden Clogs is a veritable fertility rite in of itself. We get birth, death, austere courtship, the sowing of seeds, and harvest. Olmi uses repeated shots of people looking out through windows, but all they see is time passing. The lack of heat in their abodes is stressed. They huddle around a flame to warm their bones. A flame of humanity that, like this film, sheds heat and light even in the dark, cold future.