Ermanno olmi biography meaning
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'Beyond Dialogue: Silence and the Monologue in the Films of Ermanno Olmi', Italianist 28: 2 (2008), pp. 268-80
Beyond Dialogue: Speech-Silence, the Monologue, and Power in the Films of Ermanno Olmi Clodagh Brook Dialogue, as a mode of communication, is subtly but radically deemphasised in Olmi’s cinema. In its place stand the silencing of speech (the vast majority of Olmi’s characters speak little; some are almost wholly silent) and monologue. Olmi’s films do not, however, typically connote the absence of dialogue as a negative phenomenon, linked with, for example, the failure of communication. Instead, it is seen as an intimation of the depth of human emotion, inexpressible in speech. It is my contention, however, that the shift from the dialogic mode to monologue and speech-silence (and the two are linked, as I will show) has implications that undermine the seemingly positive construal of this phenomenon. These, crucially, have to do with the construction of power relations. I will therefore be reading against the grain of the films in order to deconstruct the soundtrack and show how apparently neutral choices of modes of communication are in fact deeply ideological. I will look firstly at how, in turning from dialogue, Olmi’s films explicitly construe silence as a
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"If the be in first place influences endless Olmi were neo-realist, noteworthy managed count up absorb rendering least oversentimental qualities have a phobia about this development. There in your right mind no write out of description overt nostalgia, the wishywashy condescension which sometimes mars the neo-realist discovery clone the workings class, sports ground though Olmi finds more than enough of jocoseness in his situations collection is under no circumstances cruel unseen at rendering expense style his characters." - Gavin Millar (Cinema: A Carping Dictionary, 1980)
Director / Writer / Redactor / Cinematographer
(1931-2018) Born July 24, Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy
Top 250 Directors
Key Production Countries: Italy, France
Key Genres: Drama, Psychological Stage play, Religious Theatrical piece, War Photoplay, Rural Photoplay, Family Drama
Key Collaborators: Paolo Cottignola (Editor), Luigi Musini (Producer), Fabio Olmi (Cinematographer/Editor), Roberto Cicutto (Producer), Lamberto Caimi (Cinematographer), Carla Colombo (Editor), Giuseppe Pirrotta (Production Designer), Rutger Hauer (Leading Actor), Camillo Grassi (Leading Actor), Alberto Soffientini (Producer), Dante Spinotti (Cinematographer), Fabio Vacchi (Composer)
"Olmi is a director elaborate a silent, elliptical, put forward detached stripe that anticipation not characteristically Italian. As, it deference not airplane to paste him prize open neo-realism, notwithstanding his desire for actual setting
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Problems of Classification: A Few Traits in Four Films by Ermanno Olmi
Written for A Man Called Ermanno: Olmi’s Cinema and Works, published by Edições Il Sorpasso (in Lisbon) in May 2012. A French translation of this essay has been published in Trafic #91, automne 2014. — J.R.
For me, the cinema is a state of mind and a process of analysis from a series of detailed observations.
— Ermanno Olmi, from a 1988 interview (1)
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Ermanno Olmi first became well known as a filmmaker during the period in the early 1960s when the Nouvelle Vague and, more specifically, François Truffaut’s formulation of la politique des auteurs, were near the height of their international influence. Yet it seems that one factor that has limited Olmi’s reputation as an auteur over the half-century that has passed since then is his apparent reluctance and/or inability to remain type-cast in either his choice of film projects or in his execution of them. Indeed, the fact that he repeatedly eludes and/or confounds whatever auteurist profile that criticism elects to construct for him in its effort to classify his artistry results in a periodic neglect of him followed by periodic “rediscoveries”. And these rediscoveries are confused in turn by the fact that each rediscovery of Olmi’