The Great War (1959) on Netflix
Italy, 1916. Giovanni Busacca and Oreste Jacovacci are drafted with the other young men. Oreste takes Giovanni's money for a promised deferment that never comes. The two land in the same unit.
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- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb8.1/105,124 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes40%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1916, with Italy at war with Austria-Hungary, the army calls up its young men, and Oreste Jacovacci, a Roman, and Giovanni Busacca, from Milan, are among the recruits. At the military district Giovanni gives Oreste money for help in avoiding service, and the help never comes. The pair meet again on the train carrying them toward the front. Giovanni is angry at first, then the two become friends. Neither has any patriotic ideal; both want only to stay out of danger and get through the war alive. Posted to the same unit, the two go through training, fighting and rare leave together.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Great War (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For the first time, a film about the First World War stripped away the Fascist and Second World War propaganda rhetoric of Italy as heroic — and The Great War ran into trouble with the censors and was banned for under-18s.
- Director Mario Monicelli offered Emilio Lussu payment for the borrowings from his book, but Lussu, perhaps convinced Italian comedy was rubbish, refused to have anything to do with the film and told Monicelli to make it just as he liked.
- The film grew from an idea by Luciano Vincenzoni, influenced by Guy de Maupassant's story "Two friends", and was first conceived as a star vehicle for Vittorio Gassman alone; producer Dino De Laurentiis decided to add a second character, played by Alberto Sordi.
- Carlo Salsa, a journalist and writer who had actually fought in the areas shown in the film during the First World War, served as script consultant, helping with the story, dialogue and background.
- In 2008 Italy's Ministry of Cultural Heritage put The Great War on its list of 100 Italian films to be saved, films said to have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978.
