Feature film
San Gottardo
Villi Hermann · 1977
Synopsis
Two tunnels driven through the Gotthard massif, a century apart: the railway tunnel from 1872 to 1882 and the road tunnel from 1969 to 1976. The film sets them side by side, in their economic, financial and social aspects, and follows the men who came from elsewhere to dig, across countries and cultures. The nineteenth-century construction site returns in tableaux vivants, in which the bourgeoisie and the working classes each build their share of the line; the contemporary site is filmed live.
Context
Hermann wrote the screenplay with Eve Martin and produced it with Robert Boner for the Zurich Filmkollektiv. Renato Berta and Hans Stürm shot it, in colour and on sixteen millimetre; Elisabeth Wälchli and Rainer M. Trinkler edited it, and Luc Yersin handled the sound. Maurice Aufair, Roger Jendly, Mathias Gnädinger and Hans-Dieter Zeidler are among the actors in the reconstructed scenes. It was its author's first feature film.
Who it is for
An hour and a half. It helps to know that the nineteenth-century scenes are acted and that those of today are not.
Prizes and reception
Silver Leopard at the Locarno festival in 1977, and shown the same year at Cannes, in the L'Air du temps section.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.