Death in Florence

Family Diary. At the time it seemed a stroke of luck. Surely a glorious stroke of luck that a peasant baby who had lost his mother should take the fancy of a baron's butler and be carried away to a Florentine villa to grow up as a young man of the leisure class. But if it was luck it was bad luck. The butler pampered his adopted son and then cruelly turned against him. At 18, Lorenzo found himself on the streets with a taste for champagne and no money to buy it, with a living to be earned and no training to do it. After two years of odd jobs, he felt lucky to be hired as an office boy. Then like a fool he got married and had a child. Crushed by work and worry, he fell ill, and a long stay in a public hospital did the rest. At 27 he was dead.

A pathetic tale of no particular significance. However, it is told with care and tenderness in this Italian film adapted from a novel by Vasco Pratolini. The pace is lento, sometimes troppo lento, but the color photography tactfully subtends the mood of green and yellow melancholy, and Director Valeric Zurlini develops a very real and moving relationship between the hero (Jacques Perrin) and his older brother (Marcello Mastroianni). It is fascinating to watch Mastroianni, who in his recent films (La Dolce Vita, La Notte, 8 1/2) has emerged as the Clark Gable of existentialism, play a simple, decent human being. He does it well.

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