Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39492 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-01-20
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Surround Sound, Digital Sound, NTSC
• Original language: Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 128 minutes

Amazon.com
Winner of the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 1998 Venice Film Festival, The Way We Laughed is another richly layered drama from Gianni Amelio, the acclaimed director of the multiple-award-winning 1995 arthouse hit Lamerica. A tragic tale of brotherhood, Amelio's ambitiously structured film spans six years (1958-64) in the lives of an illiterate Sicilian named Giovanni (Enrico Lo Verso, from Lamerica) and his younger, enigmatic brother Pietro (Francesco Guiffrida) as they seek a new life in the class-divided city of Turin. Divided into six novel-like chapters that cover one pivotal day in each passing year, this emotionally resonant drama reveals how the gradually successful Giovanni desperately wants Pietro to achieve respectability as a schoolteacher. But when a sudden murder forces each brother into moral compromise, Amelio's film evolves into a mysterious study of dysfunctional loyalty, charting the growth of postwar Italy as it charts the love and sacrifice that will change the brothers' lives forever. While it demands the viewer's rapt attention, The Way We Laughed is a satisfying film that offers no easy answers to its complex human equation. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Brotherly bonds and love and secrets...
Movie is set in Turin, Italy in the post-war poverty era of the 50's and 60's. Two Sicilian brothers immigrate to Turin - the elder is illiterate and the younger with promise to become a teacher and professor.

Movie is divided into six stories over the 1958 to 1964 time period titled (1) Arrivals, (2) Betrayals, (3) Money, (4) Blood, (5) Families. Giovanni, the older brother, moves from a kind hearted man in poverty to a tough labor boss who acquires influence (and not always with clean hands) to a family man trying to put his unsavory (?) past behind him.

Meanwhile Pietro, the younger brother, struggles to meet his older brother's admiration and expectations - he's shifty, he lies, he cuts class, he steals, he fails school - and all w/o his older brother's knowledge who is toiling in low paid jobs to pay for his brother's expenses. Pietro eventually eventually pulls it out and becomes the brother taking the high road.

The Brothers' love for one another, the secrets that they keep from each other, the different path that each man takes - all make this a fascinating story. However, I found that the movie left a number of nagging gaps for me in the story-line and character understanding/definition driving my movie rating.

superb
A great film about poverty, morality, loyalty, love and the injurious effects of concealment and shame.

The Way We Laughed
Amelio's despondent tale of two brothers seems to have been yanked straight out of Vittorio De Sica's playbook, with a dash of Biblical fraternal conflict to complete the picture. Lo Verso is a mesmerizing presence, as he touchingly conveys Giovanni's seemingly limitless love and naiveté. So, too, is Giuffrida, playing the mysterious, hard-to-read Pietro, who may not be everything he represents to Giovanni. A fascinating, puzzling study of loyalty and family bonds twisted by postwar Italy's unforgiving pace, "Laughed" will leave its mark on your heart.