Mediterraneo

Mediterraneo
original movie poster
Directed by	Gabriele Salvatores
Produced by	Silvio Berlusconi Mario Cecchi Gori Vittorio Cecchi Gori Gianni Minervini
Written by	Enzo Monteleone
Starring	Diego Abatantuono Claudio Bigagli Giuseppe Cederna Claudio Bisio
Music by	Giancarlo Bigazzi Marco Falagiani
Cinematography	Italo Petriccione
Editing by	Nino Baragli
Distributed by	Miramax Films
Release date(s)	September 9, 1991 (premiere at TIFF) 22 March 1992 (NYC only)
Running time	96 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian English Greek Turkish

Mediterraneo is an Italian film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991. The film is set during World War II, and regards a group of Italian soldiers who become stranded on a Greek island and are left behind by the war. The filming took place on the island of Kastellórizo.

Plot

In 1941, one year after Italy joined Germany against the Allies in World War II, a small group of misfit Italian soldiers is sent to a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea for four months of lookout duty. The soldiers include a lieutenant who likes art, a macho sergeant, a farmer accompanied by his beloved donkey Silvana, and other quirky people. They are not very good soldiers, but a cross section of average, independent men.

The soldiers anticipate attack from outside and on the island and take all sorts of inept precautions. They find a small town with no people. They see bombing on the horizon and realize that the ship that would pick them up has been destroyed. Then mysteriously, people reappear in the village: the villagers say they hid because the Germans had taken all the men. They have decided to accommodate the Italians. It isn't long before everyone's sunny nature appears. The Italian soldiers are absorbed into the life, heat and landscape of the idyllic island.

The local priest asks the lieutenant, a Sunday painter, to restore the murals in his church. Two soldiers, who are brothers, befriend a lovely young woman, a shepherdess, who believes that three is the perfect number for an affair of pure sexual fun. The sergeant takes up folk dancing and the shyest of the soldiers falls profoundly in love with the island's single, very overworked, prostitute.

Cast

• Diego Abatantuono as Sgt. Nicola Lo Russo
• Claudio Bigagli as Lt. Raffaele Montini
• Giuseppe Cederna as Pvt. Antonio Farina
• Claudio Bisio as Pvt. Corrado Noventa
• Luigi Alberti as Pvt. Eliseo Strazzabosco
• Ugo Conti as Pvt. Luciano Colasanti
• Memo Dini as Pvt. Libero Munaron
• Vasco Mirandola as Pvt. Felice Munaron
• Vana Barba as Vassilissa

Box Office

The movie was a box office success.

External links

• Mediterraneo at the Internet Movie Database