An open window overlooking a modern Italian city, 1982. You can imagine the warm air and the

smell of Rome or Florence or wherever it is. A woman begins telling a bedtime story. This is August 10th, the night of the

shooting stars, which according to Tuscan lore is a night where you can look up and

have a wish granted by that most fleeting of celestial phenomena.

You might not think a war film framed as a bedtime story would work, but look up at the sky,

and if you see a shooting star, perhaps even that wish can be granted.

The mother is telling a story to her infant child, the story of that same night many years

ago during the last days of World War II.

So we flash back and bear witness through the eyes of Cecilia,

the six-year-old girl that this mother once was.

Because she's relating her childhood memory,

it sometimes feels like a very Italian

stand by me. It's a technique that keeps the viewer at an intentional remove.

Stories of what happened to other people are conflated with living memory and often surreal because a child

doesn't always understand what she's overhearing.

Violence depicted in the film is often either off-screen, slapstick, or cartoonishly divorced from reality, a comment, it seems, on how

memory can be transformed as a coping mechanism for the traumatized.

The film, directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, draws heavily on

Italian neo-realism. Listen to our friendly fire episode about Rossellini's Paizan, for an example from

this genre.

Because of that, we also get a mix of professional

and non-professional actors depicting the struggle

...