Cinema
From the Branches Drops the Withered Blossom
Déjà s'envole la fleur maigre
Paul Meyer · 1960
Synopsis
The Borinage, at the end of the fifties. An Italian family, in search of a better life, comes to join the father, a miner in the region. At the same time, Domenico, another Italian miner, can think only of returning to his village after seventeen years spent underground, as work is becoming ever scarcer. Between melancholy, poverty and the joys of the families, the film follows these immigrants struck by unemployment and seized by nostalgia.
Context
The Ministry of Public Instruction had commissioned a film on the supposedly successful adaptation of the children of foreign workers. Meyer shot with immigrant miners and their families, without professional actors, and showed a region losing its work. The commissioner rejected the film, which Paul-Henri Spaak prevented from going to the Moscow festival, and the director had to repay the public funds committed. The title is taken from a line by the Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo.
Who it is for
A feature film of eighty-four minutes, in black and white, in French and Italian, played by miners and their families.
Prizes and reception
Critics' Prize at the Porretta Terme festival in 1960, where Rossellini, Antonioni and De Sica praised it.
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