Good Morning, Babylon

Nicola and Andrea are the sons of a family of stonemasons who have restored cathedrals in Italy for generations. When their father's workshop goes under they leave for America. They wander for years without work and end up in Hollywood. There they start working on the Babylon set of D. W. Griffith's Intolerance: they are the only ones who know stone. The two brothers each marry an actress. Then the First World War comes and the two brothers find themselves on opposite sides at the front. The film was directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani together; two directors who are brothers making a film about brothers. The telling sees cinema not as an industry but as a continuation of cathedral building: the same scale, the same craft, the same impermanence. Vincent Spano and Joaquim de Almeida play the brothers, with Greta Scacchi in the cast. The set-building sequences are the most magnificent part.