The Tree of Wooden Clogs Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		5.0

The Tree of Wooden Clogs Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 27, 2019

Members or fans of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) had best approach The Tree of Wooden Clogs with a bit of awareness, as this beautifully wrought film depicting a year in the lives of several peasant families toward the end of the 19th century includes some viscerally shocking scenes of various animals being slaughtered around the farm where the families all toil. While The Tree of Wooden Clogs came out at least a few decades after what many fans would most likely consider the height of the Italian Neorealist movement, the film does bear some of the same verité-esque approaches as the works of, say, Rossellini or de Sica, and that includes what evidently were actual killings of various farm beasts. If those with squeamish stomachs can get past a couple of those kinds of scenes, The Tree of Wooden Clogs is almost like watching one of those evocative paintings of feudal life done by Pieter the Elder Bruegel come fully alive, albeit transported here to the northern Italian region of Lombard and (as mentioned above) taking place on the cusp of the 20th century. The Tree of Wooden Clogs may also bring to mind some other pieces of Italian cinema that take novelistic approaches toward documenting the lives of people tied to the land, including efforts like Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900, though The Tree of Wooden Clogs’ director, Ermanno Olmi, is perhaps a bit more recondite than Bertolucci in offering a subtext rife with class distinctions and simmering socioeconomic unrest.

And in fact it may be that very misdirection (if that’s really the proper word) that ultimately gives The Tree of Wooden Clogs its lasting power. While the story seems to be an organically unfolding journey through the seasons with a quartet of tenant farmers working the soil (and occasionally butchering animals), there actually is a potent through line, one which is hinted at in one of the very first scenes as parents decide how to offer their children a better life, and what ends up being a kind of semi-tragic denouement toward the end of the film as those efforts at betterment lead to some unexpected consequences.

What repeatedly impresses throughout this long film (something else it shares with 1900) is how Olmi hints rather than overtly states. His subtlety in revealing a whole host of interrelationships is really remarkable, and makes this film one that continually unveils new subtexts upon repeated viewings. As Mike Leigh mentions in his engaging introduction to the film included on this disc as a supplement, it’s rather remarkable that a bunch of non-professional actors were able to convey such truth so seemingly effortlessly in this beautiful, heartfelt but kind of melancholic film.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Tree of Wooden Clogs is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. There are two sources of information about this transfer, the first being some pre-credits text, as follows:

L'albero degli zoccoli was restored by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory with funding from The Film Foundation. Additional support provided by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and The Criterion Collection.

Special thanks to Ermanno Olmi and Paolo Cottignola for their consultation on this restoration.

L'albero degli zoccoli was restored from the original camera negative, scanned at 4K resolution, using a vintage 35m print preserved by Cinecitta Luce as a reference. Ermanno Olmi's active participation resulted in a new color grading.

The original soundtrack, spoken in the Bergamo dialect, has been restored from the vintage print. New 35mm and digital elements have been created for preservation and distribution.

In the accordion style foldout insert, there is the following verbiage as well about the transfer:

The Tree of Wooden Clogs is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1. On widescreen televisions, black bars will appear on the left and right of the image to maintain the proper screen format. Supervised by director Ermanno Olmi, this new digital transfer was created in 4K resolution on an Arriscan film scanner. The restoration was undertaken by The Film Foundation and the Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, Italy, from the 35 mm original camera negative. The original monaural soundtrack was remastered from a 35 mm soundtrack print.

This is an often nice looking transfer of a gorgeously filmed production (Olmi also shot and edited the film himself), with a suitably organic looking grain field and secure compression that is able to easily handle not just the grain but a number of scenes that are almost drenched in fog and mist. The palette is a bit on the gray-brown side but often has a kind of blue-green undertone, and vis a vis that "new color grading" mentioned above in the pre-credits text, I have to say from my own personal memory this transfer seems to be considerably darker and more tinted (for want of a better term) than I remember it being when I saw it theatrically, admittedly several decades ago. Detail levels are generally excellent, but can obviously vary depending on lighting conditions (Olmi seems to favor natural light sources, and there are several dusky scenes that are shrouded in shadows). Unfortunately, Arrow's UK branch never provided me with a screener for their UK release of The Tree of Wooden Clogs, but in doing a little digging around the internet, it seems that their transfer (evidently based on the same master) has different grading, and one that to my eyes looks more like what I remember the theatrical exhibition looking like.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Tree of Wooden Clogs has a nice sounding LPCM Mono track which our specs list as Italian, but which is actually in the Bergamesque dialect, a patois spoken in a northern region of Italy which is actually a bit closer to French at times*. The film's dialogue is rendered with fine fidelity, and the kind of odd score featuring a bunch of J.S. Bach "tunes" also sounds fine. Ambient environmental effects are pretty ubiquitous given the setting here, and they sound fine as well on this problem free track.

*Aficionados of French classical music will no doubt know that one of Claude Debussy's best remembered compositions is his Suite Bergamesque, whose title harkens back to the town of Bergamo in Northern Italy, which evidently gave birth to a rustic dance known as the Bergamask.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction by Mike Leigh (1080p; 7:00) offers Leigh, long a champion of The Tree of Wooden Clogs, offering a nice overview of the film.


• "The Roots of the Tree" (1080i; 52:31) is a 1981 episode culled from London Weekend Television's The South Bank Show with host Melvyn Bragg giving some background on things like Neorealism (with some interesting clips) and then Ermanno Olmi discussing the film (in Italian with English voiceover translation). The also includes footage of visiting the tenant farm where it was shot, as well as some pretty long snippets from the film itself.


• Ermanno Olmi aggregates two interviews with the director, one from 1978 (1080i; 7:08) done for French television during the Cannes Film Festival that year (the film of course won the Palme d'Or), and the second from 2008 (1080p; 32:31) moderated by critic Lorenzo Codelli. Both are in Italian with English subtitles.


• Cast and Crew (1080i; 34:15) is a panel discussion held at the 2016 Cinema Ritrovata Festival in Bologna, Italy, and includes production manager Enrico Leoni, script supervisor Fiorella Lugli, assistant production designer Rossella Guarna, and cast members Omar Brignoli (Minek) and Franco Pilenga (Stefano). The discussion is moderated by Festival director Gian Luca Farinelli and filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher. In Italian with English subtitles.


• Trailer (1080p; 4:23)

Additionally, the typically well appointed insert (a kind of accordion foldout in place of a booklet) features an essay called Sacred Realism by Deborah Young, technical information on the disc and a couple of stills.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Tree of Wooden Clogs is a superb piece of filmmaking and certainly one of the masterpieces of World Cinema of its era. Criterion is offering a release that may raise a few hackles in the video department due to its color timing and overall darkness, but which has solid compression, nice sounding audio, and some really interesting supplements. With caveats noted, Highly recommended.