''Mediterraneo'' is a 1991 Italian war

comedy-drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

film directed by Gabriele Salvatores and written by

Enzo Monteleone Enzo Monteleone (born 13 April 1954 in Padova, Italy) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. Career Enzo Monteleone made his professional debut as a screenwriter with the screenplay of ''Hotel Colonial'', an Italian-American co-product ...

. The film is set during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and concerns a group of Italian soldiers who become stranded on a Greek island in the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea ; tr, Ege Denizi ( Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος: "Egéo Pélagos", Turkish: "Ege Denizi" or "Adalar Denizi") is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans ...

, and are left behind by the war. It won the

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...

in 1992.

Plot

In 1941, one year after

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

joined

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

against the Allies in

, a small group of misfit Italian soldiers is sent to a small Greek island in the

for four months of lookout duty. The soldiers include a lieutenant who likes art, a macho sergeant, a ski instructor accompanied by his beloved donkey Silvana, and other quirky people. They are not very good soldiers, but a cross section of average, independent men, who like the Greeks (and the occasional visiting Turk), are Mediterraneans, who greatly resemble the locals in appearance and culture—a catchphrase "One face, one race" occurs throughout the film. 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. That night, they see bombing on the horizon and by radio interception, discover that the ship that was intended to pick them up has been destroyed. Mysteriously, people reappear in the village: the villagers say they hid because the Germans had taken all the men, but having seen that the Italians are absolutely harmless they have decided to return to their lives. It's not long before everyone's sunny nature appears. The Italian soldiers, unacquainted with a war they clearly do not sense as theirs, are absorbed into the life, heat and landscape of the idyllic island. The local orthodox priest asks the lieutenant, an amateur painter, to restore the murals in his church. Two soldiers, who are brothers, befriend a lovely young woman, a shepherdess. They eventually consummate their friendship with the shepherdess who in turn loves them both equally. Sergeant Lo Russo, the only member of the crew with a fiery spirit for war, takes up folk dancing and begins to reflect on his place in the universe. Meanwhile, the shyest soldier, Farina, falls in love with the island's prostitute, named Vasilissa. In their old age, three of the men are reunited on the island

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 Ugo Conti (born 30 March 1955) is an Italian actor. He appeared in more than fifty films since 1982. Selected filmography References External links * * 1955 births Living people Italian male film actors {{Italy-film-actor-st ...

as Pvt. Luciano Colasanti *

Antonio Catania Antonio Catania (born 22 February 1952) is an Italian actor. Life and career Born in Acireale, Province of Catania, Antonio Catania studied acting at the Drama School of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan. After the graduation he started an intense ...

as Lt. Carmelo La Rosa * Memo Dini as Pvt. Libero Munaron * Vasco Mirandola as Pvt. Felice Munaron * (credited as Vanna Barba) as Vasilissa

Production

The film's producers are , A.M.A. Film, Silvio Berlusconi Communications and . The script was written by

and is loosely based on the autobiographical novel ''Sagapò'' by Renzo Biasion. The script and the novel show marked differences in how they portray the Italian army in Greece, with the novel giving a more realistic account. Filming took place on the Greek island of

Kastellórizo Kastellorizo or Castellorizo (; el, Καστελλόριζο, Kastellórizo), officially Megisti ( ''Megísti''), is a Greek island and municipality of the Dodecanese in the Eastern Mediterranean.Bertarelli, 131 It lies roughly off the south co ...

, in the

Dodecanese The Dodecanese (, ; el, Δωδεκάνησα, ''Dodekánisa'' , ) are a group of 15 larger plus 150 smaller Greek islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Turkey's Anatolia, of which 26 are inhabited ...

island complex.

Release

''Mediterraneo'' was released in Italy on 31 January 1991 by Penta Distribuzione before premiering at the

1991 Toronto International Film Festival The 16th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 5 and September 14, 1991. Jodie Foster's directorial debut film Little Man Tate, premiered in the ''Gala Presentation'' at the festival. ...

on 9 September 1991, where its North American distribution rights were purchased by

Miramax Films Miramax, LLC, also known as Miramax Films, is an American film and television production and distribution company founded on December 19, 1979, by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and based in Los Angeles, California. It was initially a lead ...

. Internationally, the film was truncated by 10 minutes, resulting in an 86-minute cut. The film was submitted as the Italian entry for the

in November 1991. It was released in the United States in March 1992, a week before the Academy Awards and made its worldwide run over the next two years.

Box office

The film grossed $4.5 million in the United States and Canada, and was the highest-grossing non-English language film at the US box office that year but was later surpassed by '' Indochine'' which was released at Christmas 1992 and grossed most of its revenue in 1993.

Reception

''Mediterraneo'' was received mostly positively by film critics. On

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, the film has a 79% score, based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 6.33/10. Several critics linked the movie to the tradition of Italian neorealism. Nevertheless, the victory of the Academy Award raised some eyebrows, with ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' describing the movie as a "schmaltzy island fantasy", and the ''

Film Journal ''Film Journal International'' was a motion-picture industry trade magazine published by the American company Prometheus Global Media. It was a sister publication of ''Adweek'', ''Billboard'', ''The Hollywood Reporter'', and other periodicals. Hi ...

'' calling it a "clichéd number".

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

stated that this was the only film he ever walked out of because it was "utterly without redeeming merit". Among historians the movie was discussed as a prime example of the myth of '' Italiani brava gente'', the popular Italian belief that Italian soldiers were not complicit in war crimes and had distinguished themselves through humanity and compassion during World War II — in stark contrast to their ideologically motivated and brutal German allies. The movie fails to give any reference to the atrocities committed by Italians during the Axis occupation of Greece, while portraying

Royal Italian Army The Royal Italian Army ( it, Regio Esercito, , Royal Army) was the land force of the Kingdom of Italy, established with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. During the 19th century Italy started to unify into one country, and in 1861 Manf ...

soldiers as essentially good-natured people, if not cute, innocent buffoons. While in reality the burning of villages, the shooting of civilians and rapes were common features of the Italian occupation, the film goes so far as to show Italian aggressors happily mingling with the locals and even establishing consensual erotic relationships with Greek women.Paolo Favero,
Blessed be the Good Soldier: Cinema, Media and the Manufacturing of Nationhood in Post 9/11 Italy
' in Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo, XII/XIII (2011), no. 13 (1), p. 55-66

Awards

It won the