Family Diary

A journalist learns that his brother has died and begins writing the story of the two of them. They were separated when their mother died; the younger, Lorenzo, was given to a wealthy family and Enrico stayed with their grandmother. Years later they meet. The distance between them is a matter of class: one was educated and the other was not, and neither can speak about it. Then Lorenzo falls ill. Valerio Zurlini directs. Marcello Mastroianni plays Enrico and Jacques Perrin plays Lorenzo. The source is Vasco Pratolini's autobiographical novel. The form is the narrator's memory. The narrative runs in the second person, the elder brother addressing the dead younger one, which comes from the structure of the source. The subject is guilt. Enrico believes he did not look after his brother well enough, and the film builds it as a reckoning; it is an interior monologue rather than a plot. Zurlini works visually apart from the Italian cinema of his period: the colour is soft, the camera calm, and the scenes composed like paintings. It shared the Golden Lion at the 1962 Venice film festival with Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood. Jacques Perrin was very young at the time and the role is among the most important of his early career. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian literary adaptation and films built on brothers. Who it is not for: the pace is very slow, little happens, and the narrative proceeds in a mournful register throughout.