Family Diary, the revelation of last winter's Marcello Mastroianni tribute, left many viewers wanting more from an important but relatively uncelebrated director, Valerio Zurlini. Too late for neorealism, and perhaps too indigenous to share the international stage with Fellini and Antonioni, Zurlini is only occasionally referred to in the history books among the "young generation" of filmmakers that included Olmi and Bolognini. New York critic Elliott Stein notes that he is rather "a lost generation unto himself." His premature death in 1982, after only eight features, preserved this status in stone. In Zurlini's films we view Italy through the perceptions of a sensitive, literate, and visually articulate artist. Born in Bologna in 1926, he trained as a lawyer but was a passionate student of art, and then, like so many others, studied war as well. Both art and war would inform his films. Zurlini was a landscapist whose subject was character, minutely observed against the backdrops of Parma, Florence, and Rimini. In his color films one can see the influence of his artistic mentors, the painters Giorgio Morandi and Ottone Rosai, while his black-and-white compositions are striking in their visual explication of evolving but doomed passions. A Resistance fighter himself, Zurlini's powerful war films are uniquely if obliquely outspoken. Le Soldatesse, Black Jesus, and Desert of the Tartars focus on the terrible erosion of internal values that results when Europe fights its wars on the lands and the backs of others. In Violent Summer, set in Fascist Italy, the others are the Italian people themselves. This series is presented in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco. We wish to thank Amelia Antonucci, Director, Italian Cultural Institute, S.F.; Felice Laudadio, President, Cinecittà Holding, Rome; and Giacomo Martini and Maria Cristina Turchi, General Direction, Culture and Tourism, Emilia-Romagna Region. Sunday December 3
