User reviews

Two brothers ;one of them,after his mother's death (she died during the birth)is taken in by a rich man,the other has to manage .But things will not turn out as expected.

The movie is a long flashback ,Enrico's somber meditation on his young brother's fate ,whom he only saw sporadically.There are a lot of holes in the plot,probably the weakest link of an unusual film.Mastroianni and Perrin (hardly 21) give strong performances which allow the movie to avoid pathos and melodrama.They are given strong support by madame Sylvie,as their grand-mother.What will strike you in Zurlini's film is the total absence of happiness,in the world which has forgot what it is to be happy:even the scene at the restaurant where the two boys invite their grandma is downright depressing;later the money the old lady gives to her grandson leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.All the scenes in the hospital are harsh,and may repel some.

It was the second time Zurlini and Perrin had teamed up,after "la ragazza con la valiglia".The last time ,in 1976,was the making of their masterpiece (Zurlini:director;Perrin:producer and actor) " Il deserto dei Tartari" from Buzatti's eponymous novel.

"Cronica familiare" is a movie that deserves to be watched,unless you're down in the dumps.

Never heard of this film until 3/20 at 2 am..Thanks to TCM.. & Ive been a fan of Mastroianni & Italian cinema for decades... this is a real beauty..another hidden treasure.. really wanted to sleep (Im an insomniac) but couldnt It was magnificent..Mastroianni was one of the grreatest actors ever on Cinema.. & this film is special..same year as Divorce Italian Style & a year prior to 8 1/2...this film was hidden dont recall it being released in US theatres & was going to see his movies at that time..Mastroianni is magnificent, & as his younger brother, Jacques Perrin is outstanding as is the entire..(unknown to me ,cast) can't wait to see again..Must mention the photography.. filmed like beautiful Italian paintings subtle earth tones, realistic, soft yet striking..each frame is a work of art..Bravo..can't wait to see again & again

In war-ravaged Italy, tubercular journalist Marcello Mastroianni (as Enrico) learns little brother Jacques Perrin (as Lorenzo) has passed… In flashback, we learn the brothers were separated upon the death of their mother, and led different lives. They are reunited as estranged adults, grow to love each other as brothers, and are again separated by death. The co-starring lead actors give it all the believability they can muster - which, when you have Mastroianni and Perrin acting, is considerable - but, there is a noticeable age difference, they never look deathly ill, and are each distractingly handsome. As a result, they often seem more like lovers than brothers. Shameless as ever, Sylvie (as Grandmother) claims it's "easy to see" that they are brothers. Well, okay. Director Valerio Zurlini and cameraman Giuseppe Rotunno make this English-retitled "Family Diary" look amazingly beautiful - herein, a old radiator against a stark wall is a work of art. They, and the haunting performances, do make it worth watching.

******* Cronaca familiare (9/62) Valerio Zurlini ~ Marcello Mastroianni, Jacques Perrin, Sylvie, Salvo Randone

Phew! What a beautiful film! I'd rank this as one of the most awe-inspiringly composed and photographed color films of all time. You've never seen Mastroianni, until you've seen him in this film, walking around like an iconic black ghost in the darkly hued existentialist-to-the-nth-degree technicolor universe of post-war Italy created by Zurlini and legendary DP Giussepe Rottuno. What a stroke of genius to contrast the bleakest and most depressing of subjects possible with the most fantastically poetic and gorgeous technicolor cinematography this side of `Black Narcissus.' This is one of Rottuno's finest works ever: full of absolutely breathtaking deeper than deep blacks and colors that seem to have sprouted from some otherworldly weathered, neo-realist hallucination. And what timeless subtly paced, unerringly poetic, intelligent and completely uncompromising direction by Zurlini, the forgotten genius of Italian cinema, whose style in this film can be roughly described as a unique melange of neo-realism, Antonioni, Michael Powell, Jacques Becker, early Pasolini and early Bertolucci. It's easy to imagine how easily this story of a tubercular writer grieving the death of his younger brother through a series of flashbacks could've turned into not much more than a melodramatic tearjerker; yet in Zurlini's hands and through the incredible, tour-de-force performance of Marcello Mastroiani in the lead role, the Marxist-proleteriat-plight-of-the-poor sentimentality at the film's core transcends itself and becomes a deeply affecting, painful and ultimately cathartic meditation on death, despair, and the possibilities of redemption in the direst of circumstances.

In 1945, Enrico Corsi (Marcello Mastroianni) receives news of his younger brother Lorenzo's death. He recalls their earlier lives. Their mother had died from complications giving birth to Lorenzo. With their father sick, Lorenzo was raised by an English baron's butler as a gentleman while Enrico was raised by their poor grandmother. Next, they run into each other in 1935. They have been estranged from each other and from their sick father. History is recounted as they come to terms with their brotherhood. Enrico has the drive from his poverty. Lorenzo has no ambition and struggles to find a steady job. His pretty face is not enough. He joins medical trials and falls ill.

Whether it's Enrico's narration or the dialogue, everything is in a hush tone. It is a sad grinding descend. It's a little distancing especially when we're told about his bad marriage but never meet his wife. There are a lot of talking but it feels melodramatic. Mastroianni remains a master. I don't think I can stay with this movie without him.

I wept like I hadn't wept in a movie for years. Director Valerio Zurlini and his cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno gives us a visual symphony in browns and dark yellows. The faces of the brothers Enrico and Lorenzo played with shattering truth by Marcello Mastroianni and Jaques Perrin have made a home in my brain. Their reunion with their grandmother, played by the sublime Sylvie, is an image, a film moment that I shall never forget. As it happens more often than not, the Italians have released this gem in DVD without English subtitles - not in English or any other language for that matter. I'm grateful for speaking and understanding Italian well enough to enjoy this movie to the fullest. If you do as well, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

I watched this on TCM and there was something wrong. when Enrico thinks about his brother in voice over, (as if he is writing an autobiography,) instead of Marcello's voice, some idiot dubbed in a ridiculous American actor's voice. firstly, the dubbed voice is all wrong in tone...it's as if the actor were from Car54 or Dragnet, and secondly, the voice reads the lines in the third person, often with bad translation!!!

So you have Enrico remembering his brother, and relating his recollections to the audience in the first person, but you have a voice over going "Enrico says", and "Enrico thinks",...it's a travesty.

This film is somewhat too sentimental, and slightly overwrought, but it has touching and truthful scenes as well. too bad that just when you become involved, some American butchery intrudes. 6/10.

This is a film so great that to attempt to describe it nearly forces one into poetry. The visual flow alone is like a walk through all the great art galleries of the Western world, and the camera pauses on many of those scenes to permit us to admire and study the surprising compositions and tonal pallets. The story is viewed oddly in the third person - I felt somewhat like an astronomer viewing the short-lived movement of a group of comets through the coldness of space and time - helplessly seeking meaning and comfort through love, but doomed to end meaningless and forgotten - following some brutish laws of physics whose study seems a shrewd exercise in futility.

The scope of action is exceedingly restricted - perhaps more microscopic than telescopic - in the end, it's all the same: universal and intimate, cold and loving, helpless, with an odd image of Joseph's multi-colored coat haunting the mind - yet another symbolic object long rotted into the dust as must all symbols.

This is the work of people who have a very mature, objective understanding of life and who, without romanticizing or distorting or euphemizing, have created something both true and extraordinarily beautiful.

FAMILY DIARY (Cronaca familiare) 1963. Valerio Zurlini's low key chamber piece about a Writer (Marcello Mastroainni) and his Brother (Jacques Perrin). Set mainly in WWII era Florence, the drama is notable mainly for Mastroainni's performance and Cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno's burnished camerawork. Based on co-screenwriter Vasco Pratolini's semi-autobiographical novel, the film makes some odd structural choices in how it tells it's story. There are really only four characters of note and crucial parts of the chronology (including a wife and child) are passed over in favor of a few long intimate scenes. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if one felt the full weight of their life stories in those sequences, but, it feels incomplete. Sketchy narration* tries to fill the gaps, but, its not a proper substitute. What does work are the performances not only of Mastroainni and Perrin, but of the single-name moniker actress Sylvie as their grandmother. Her scenes provide some of the emotional attachment that is lacking elsewhere. The setting during the rise of fascism and the war is also curiously left in the background. FAMILY DIARY is worth a look for fans of the great lead actor but, it's only partly successful.

* The U.S. prints curiously dub the Narration in English AND subtitle them at the same time! Further, the spoken narration doesn't always match the subtitles. A real botch job.

Zurlini next best work to his monumental "The Desert of the Tartars" made 14 years later. "Family Diary" shared the Golden Lion at Venice with Tarkovsky's early work "Ivan's childhood" (with Konchalovsky as the uncredired co-scriptwriter) for the best film. Both Mastroianni and Perrin give creditable performances as do Guiseppe Rotunno as its cinematographer. Like Satyajit Ray, Zurlini's cinema is mostly a world of adapting existing tales for the screen, which both did with aplomb. This film never bothers to explain why Mastroianni's character Enrico never has a female friend or who his biological father was. Why is a butler of a rich family taking care of Lorenzo as a foster dad? Zurlini's cinema rarely dwells on such crucial details but excells excels in capturing inner turmoils and cinematographic wonders (Rotunno in this work and Luciano Tavoli in "The Desert of the Tartars"). Zurlini is a master of capturing beauty in bleak tales on screen. Cineastes will see parallels in the tale of this film with Bergman's "Cries and Whispers." Zurlini re-utilized Perrin in "The Desert of the Tartars" some 14 years later.

This is one of the most moving films ever made. The atmosphere, the settings, the use of colour and the superb mastery of Zurlini's hand make Mastroianni and Perrin reach unthought-of characterisations of the two unhappy brothers. This is not a movie for all audiences. Its own qualities make it selective in itself. All the misery, sorrow, suffering and delicacy of the feelings that pervade the life of the two characters are brought to life with a sort of detachment and (paradoxically as it may seem) intimacy seldom seen in the screen. Absolutely a must. When will this masterpiece be available on DVD ?

It's the film of my life! I never saw a film more beautiful than this. It's very touching. Mastroianni is great, but also Jacques Perrin who acts as Lorenzo is wonderful! I saw the film and I read the novel by Vasco Pratolini. Both excellent! Believe me.

Cronaca Familiare "Family Diary" is an emotional movie that is both beautiful and sad. It deals with the twists and turns in the family life of two brothers who grow up apart and then become close in early adulthood. The brothers are performed by Jacques Perrin and Marcello Mastroianni, outstanding as different men caught in a web of family misfortune. The loss of their mother is a recurring reference point. Her death, after giving birth to the second child, marked the separation of the two sons who grew up in different worlds. The second son is adopted into the household of a wealthy noble with the older one raised by his grandmother in a far more humble life. Later, their fortunes change; the grandmother then became the binding force. The young men visit her in an institution where she has no comfort in her old age. Two children, and the grandmother form a tight family unit bound by misfortune, love and the memory of the deceased mother. The story takes place in Italy between 1918 and 1945 but the sorrow, the shared love, and changing fortunes are themes we all can relate to in life. The photography is stark, in keeping with the sombre mood but very effective. The neo-realist school of cinema, embodied by director Vittoria de Sica and movies such as The Bicycle Thief, Umberto D. etc. influenced this work by director Valerio Zurlini - with people pitted against human and social forces that result in poverty and isolation. Not happy-ending movies, they touch us in a special way. I believe these movies are gifts to the world of cinema and this one is certainly in that league of great movies.Thanks again to TCM for enabling modern audiences to view such gems.

How this one slipped off the radar screen is beyond understanding. Against a very muted palette of tone on tone, in which the character Lorenzo's beige over-coat becomes a metaphor of his indefinite link with the beige walled world, director Zurlini weaves a fascinating story of two brothers separated at birth, who effect a tragic reunion in war torn Italy.

Marcello Mastiroianni here offers a performance of greater depth than "La Dolce Vita" (which is just as it should be)but it is youngster Jacques Perrin's "Lorenzo" which surprises.

His performance, (indeed the whole film) is a study in the power of the reticence, understatement and the unsaid. Mr. Perrin's eyes, particularly in the hospital sequences, speak those volumes and light those vistas that would be trivialized in dialog form.

An excellent film with a core of deep sadness, that avoids the fatal commercial trap of sentimentalism.

I recently caught Family Portrait on a damp, dreary afternoon. Thank you TCM! What a moving cinematic experience! Giuseppe Rotunno, the film's gifted cinematographer, offers a uniquely subtle employment of color to capture the story's fragile nature. Valerio Zurlini's benign directorial style yields memorable performances from the talented cast. Marcello Mastroianni and Jacques Perrin are unforgettable as Enrico and Lorenzo.

The music of this film is by Goffredo Petrassi, and it is immediately reminiscent of Albinoni's famous Adagio and must have been inspired by that, because it expresses exactly the same mood of infinite sadness. Albinoni's Adagio would actually have fitted the film better, it's almost like you hear it all through from beginning to end, and it would have suited this film better than it did Orson Welles' "The Process". It is probably more or less a true story of two brothers, Marcello Mastroianni being the elder one, who is the only one who ever gets close to his weak constantly ailing minor brother, Jacques Perrin, and their acting is wholly convincing all the way. Like Albinoni's Adagio it is an infinitely sad family story, a tragedy constantly increasing in melancholy and sadness, and the death of Jacques Perrin is constantly prolonged and made into an infinity of sorrow. Yet there is no sentimentality but only deep, sincere and extremely genuine humanity all the way - I believe there is a story like this in every family, but most families don't speak about it, and most stories like this never become known and never find expression. The cinematography is admirable, and everything in the film breathes profound human truth. Not everyone likes sustained and prolonged tragedies like this, but this is at least very well made.

In 1954 Valerio Zurlini directed 'Le ragazze di San Frediano' based upon a novel by Vasco Pratolini whilst Marcello Mastroianni appeared in Pratolini's 'Cronache di poveri amanti' for Carlo Lizzani. Eight years on Zurlini directs Mastroianni in this adaptation of a semi-autobiographical novel by the same author.

In the interim both director and actor have progressed immeasurably. Zurlini has become one of cinema's great visual stylists and Mastroianni is in the midst of what is arguably the most satisfying phase of his career. Playing his ill-fated younger brother is the talented Jacques Perrin who enjoyed a fruitful working relationship with this director and who later pursued a parallel career as a producer.

Set against the backdrop of an exhausted and defeated Italy this is an elegiac and unbearably sad tale of loneliness, regret, disillusion and emotional guilt with an incurable disease thrown in for good measure.

As expected the script is literate whilst the muted palette of master cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno is inspired by one of Zurlini's favourite painters, Georgio Morandi. The only weakness in the film, for this viewer at any rate, lies in the frequent bursts of Goffredo Patrassi's score which do nothing to advance the narrative and which, on top of such intense performances, are unnecessary.

Special mention must be made of veteran Sylvie who is simply outstanding in the role of Grandmother. This splendid artiste made her debut in 1912 and at the age of eighty three played her only leading role as 'La Vieille Dame Indigne'.

Lovingly directed, beautifully shot and performed with the utmost conviction, this haunting work is recommended neither for the faint hearted nor for those with a short attention span. I would advise potential viewers to avoid at all costs MGM's shamelessly 'doctored' version.

Contrary to the American "butchered version", in Iran the movie was dubbed to elevate the film even more. The silk voice of Iranian Jalal Maghami moves the audience and adds to the dramatic richness of Cronaca Familiare. Attribute this to the sensitive closeness of Iranians and Italians or the strength of Iran's dubbing art, Cronaca Familiare remains a major part of the Iranians' nostalgia. The movie presents a world of humans sensations that rarely thereafter was as brilliantly repeated in cinema, thanks to the Hollywood "butchery" empire. Thematic line in service of the central, authentic concepts of family love that transcends to include universality, are opposed to the cruelty of modern times with all its sardonic lobbies and foucauldian hallucinations. It's pity that young cinemagoers today do not experience the same drams and are either restricted to watery ones or exposed to mundane, sensual stuff that leaves nothing but angered, egoist, isolated fleshes of them. What else to do with such audiences than to butcher!