A presentation made by Elena La Marca

1. First World War
portayed in movies

2. «Torneranno i Prati»
(There will be meadows again)
is a 2014 movie, directed by
Ermanno Olmi.
The movie shows a day and a
night in 1917 of twenty men
trapped in the highland of
Asiago. Imprisoned in a trench,
covered by snow, the soldiers
don’t live the true experience of
the front-line. They hear the far
away noises of the front coming
from the valley.

3. Between Man and
History
The soldiers feel alienated
and forced up to fight
against an almost
invisible enemy,
perpetually hidden in the
background.

4. The war has evolved,
hand combat is
replaced by the
explosions of
cannons. The snipers,
tunnels dug under
the threnches and
filled with dynamite,
allow the enemies to
blow up the lines.

5. In this conditions the
Italian soldiers don’t
know who their real
enemies are.
The Austro-Geman
soldiers are replaced
by the forces of Nature
and the meaningless
orders of their
commanders.

6. The cold winter in
the mountains.
Badly dressed, locked in
wooden huts with few
stoves, the snow becomes
the soldiers’ most
dangerous enemy.

7. In the freezing cold,
the soldiers are
exposed to flu and
epidemics that easily
spread and infest all
the troops. They start
to have hallucinations
which considerably
affect the general
morale.

8. The errors of the
Staff
The Officers also represent
an enemy for the soldiers.
They are often
inexperienced.They follow
outdated military
strategies. They are strict
in punishments and they
observe everything from
above, regardless of the
real conditions of the army
and the place.

9. The escape route
Men seek an escape to
their alienating
situation. They are
devoid of security,
besieged on the
external front and
without news from
home.

10. The film
The most desperate men
prefer suicide in the
trench to the
uncertainty of death on
a mission. The situation
of the soldiers can be
defined both as poetic
and nonsensical: they
create a fantasy world,
faraway from the
horrors of the war.

11. La propaganda
The Venetian lookout is
an example. Everynight
there is a fox that rests
under a shrunken
larch: the man at the
lookout begins to see a
gold covered tree,
sparkling in the night.

12. Reality
But every illusion
is doomed to fail,
under the blows
of the war.

13. Film making

14. «A mio padre»
(To my father)
This may be the last work
by Ermanno Olmi. As he
said, the idea for the film
spang from a childhood
emory:
"Quando ero bambino
mio padre mi raccontava
della guerra dove era
stato soldato“
(“When I was a child my
father used to tell me
about the war in which
he had been a soldier”)