SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Maura Delpero's film "Vermiglio" won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. It is set in an isolated Italian village in the Alps in 1944, where two deserters show up - Attilio, who's from the village, and Pietro, who is from Sicily. Atillio's extended family lets Pietro sleep in their barn. And soon a relationship with Lucia, the family's eldest daughter, goes beyond glances and sighs. Maura Delpero joins us now from Argentina, where she lives much of the year. Thank you so much for being with us.
MAURA DELPERO: Hello. Thank you for inviting.
SIMON: Tell us about Atillio's large family, who wind up being at the center of so much of this film, beginning with Cesare, the stern village schoolteacher. But he has a soft side, doesn't he?
DELPERO: He is one of the most contradictory characters, I think. All the family is inspired by my family, by the family of my father. Of course, the family of my grandfather was interesting because my grandfather was both a father and the teacher of the town. That time, a teacher of a little village was a very important person. Of course, it kind of - it's kind of a different family.
But at the same time, it's a typical family of the rural society of that time in which there's a mother who doesn't stop having children and never steps out of a kitchen. And then there are more kids than beds, and there are a lot of secrets (laughter) and a lot of stories because everyone is an individual, but everyone is also part of a community. So this was one of the aspects of interest, I think, a little more.
SIMON: I do want to ask you about just an utterly beautiful scene when Cesare, who seems to be an imperious, almost crusty schoolteacher, I think, literally weeps when he plays Vivaldi for the youngsters in his classes in his school.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "VERMIGLIO")
TOMMASO RAGNO: (As Cesare Graziadei, speaking Italian).
SIMON: What's being unlocked in his heart?
DELPERO: I think, to me, there's really a deep love for culture and the faith that culture can be a response to the nihilism of war. He's kind of an anti-militarist. He has the strength to say in front of the other peasants that maybe cohort, this is a good thing. It's one of his beautiful aspects. And, of course, he also has bad aspects, but in his contradictions, I think one of the things we love him for is that we all would like to have a teacher like this for our children.
SIMON: So much is conveyed in this film in the sights and the sounds.
SIMON: The softness in a sense, the flickering candles, the braying goats, the milk sloshing in a pail.
(SOUNDBITE OF MILK SLOSHING IN A PAIL)
DELPERO: To me, it's audio-visual. Audio-visual is an important word. We have to always think that we hear as much as we see. And I believe sound is a really interesting tool. And I felt from the very beginning that silence would have been the most important sound of the film because it was not just a matter of the period film and the fact that it is not our phonetic world. It was also a matter of space, not just time. The space is the mountains, those high mountains, and also the music, the choice of the music, like privileging the diegetic music and not putting a soundtrack from outside. I felt that the film had its own music.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "VERMIGLIO")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As peasants, singing in Italian).
DELPERO: Based on whispers, based on the songs that the peasants sing, and the music the father listens to. So even if we can hear it anticipated in one scene or a following scene narrates (ph) it, the music always comes from the source, the real source, which is the gramophone of the father.
SIMON: Yeah. What I'll refer to as a scandal becomes part of the story. In a village like Vermiglio, are there really any secrets?
DELPERO: Yeah, of course. There were a lot of secrets (laughter). But the fact is that there is always also this protection, this fear of being ashamed in front of the other villagers. So for example, when the tragedy happens to Lucia, the aunt is more worried about what will people say than what is happening to her. Here in Argentina, there's a sentence that says little village, big hell. Villages hide a lot of secrets and no one can tell them also because it's dangerous to have them.
SIMON: I'm not sure I could ever live in a village like Vermiglio. Am I missing something?
DELPERO: (Laughter) I think you are gaining a lot of freedom, and you are losing a lot of protection. I think Lucia is also metaphor of what happened in society in those years. This passage from the village to the city, from the rural to the industrial, more individual and more individualistic.
SIMON: Maura Delpero's new film "Vermiglio," Grand Jury winner at the Venice Film Festival is now showing in select U.S. theaters. Thank you so much for being with us.
DELPERO: Thank you to you. Thank you for inviting. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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