Product Description

This 1991 comedy by Gabriele Salvatores was knocked for not being deep enough, but it is what it is, and it's actually an easygoing, sunny movie about eight Italian soldiers who manage to strand themselves on a tiny Greek island paradise during World War II. The sort of mutts who would shoot a donkey for not knowing the proper password, these clumsy warriors become a comic variation on the Lotus Eaters of myth, their fighting spirit evaporated in the midst of so much beauty and sexual availability among the local women. There are also sundry opportunities for the men to find another purpose for their lives (one particularly artistic fellow works on the restoration of a church, for example). Amid the sometimes coarse jokes and gratuitous nudity, there are subtle themes about the contrast between what men are truly like in their natural state versus what they are like as killers. (The Thin Red Line this isn't, but Salvatores does, in his own way, touch on some of the same themes.) Watch this one on a cold winter's day and vicariously enjoy the tans as well as the antiwar sentiment. --Tom Keogh

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63441 in DVD
• Formats: Full Screen, Import, Subtitled, NTSC
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, Portuguese
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 87 minutes

Customer Reviews

Beautiful, touching, humorous film
This is a best-loved favorite. There is humor and beauty in a band of Italian eccentrics who happen to form a small WWII battalion sent to stand sentry on a Greek, Mediterranean island. They never see a real wartime enemy, never fire a wartime shot and are never able to communicate with their Italian commanders. What individuals do in sometimes hilarious, well-woven episodes, instead, is make friends with the occupants, fall in love with a native prostitue, fall in love with a donkey, paint frescos in a church, get stoned on marijuana, try to escape, hide to avoid leaving and so forth. They end up missing the entire war but finding a paradise that resounds in their souls -- and yours. This movie grows on you so much that you want to avoid leaving, too. I love to re-watch it, I bought it for a bedbound friend and I recommend it.

Passion for the Greek Islands
This is one of two movies that fill me with a desire to visit the Greek Islands. (The other is Shirley Valentine). I, too, return to this movie frequently, whenever I get wanderlust. It fills me with longing and nostalgia for a place I've never been, and probably never will visit. I love the characters. They all have definite delineations. My only regret is that I don't understand Italian.

Amongst the best of Italian imports of the last few decades
This wonderful Italian film shot during the 1990's, tells the story of a group of misfit Italian soldiers from various parts of Italy sent to occupy a Greek Island during World War II of zero strategic importance.

Through a series of mishaps, they lose a soldier's beloved pet donkey, and their essential two-way radio, effectively cutting them off and leaving them forgotten during the war.

Left stranded on the seemingly deserted isle, they discover they are not alone once the inhabitants realize the Italian soldiers are harmless, unlike the brutal German occupiers who preceded them.

As the natives emerge from hiding, a gradual interface between the Italians and the Greek inhabitants develops.

Bittersweet, hysterical, and almost poetic, this film is sure to delight you with its touch of whimsey, well-defined characters who all develop throughout the film, and its nostalgic look at a time long lost.

The gorgeous cinematography, uninhibited humour, tremendous acting, and fantastic script, and love for this film will sweep you away, and make you, too, feel like "...running away"...

Winner of the 1991 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and difficult to find on DVD (unlike VHS), don't pass this film up. Everyone I've shown this gem to has loved it. Find the Letterboxed copy with English subtitles if you can.