Il pianeta azzurro / The Blue Planet

Franco Piavoli: Il pianeta azzurro / The Blue Planet (IT 1981). PS. Included by Alice Rohrwacher in her 2022 Sight & Sound Top Ten.

IT 1981. P+D+SC+ED: Franco Piavoli. Un film di Franco Piavoli, dedicato a Neria. Questo film è stato realizzato nel 1981 da Franco Piavoli e Neria Poli. Montaggio del suono: Giuliana Zamariola. Mixage: Fausto Ancillai. Location: Val Bruna. 88, 83 min. Dvd extra: Interview with Franco Piavoli, 11 min. Watched on dvd at the summer cottage in Punkaharju, 27 July 2011.

Il nascere si ripete
di cosa in cosa
e la vita
a nessuno è data
in proprietà
ma a tutti in uso
– Lucretius: De rerum natura (motto of the film) (Birth spreads itself through one to another, and life is nobody's property but at anyone's disposal)

A visionary non-fiction film about nature. The film follows the four seasons in the countryside. It is a pantheistic, Epicurean film. There is no dialogue and no music in this wonderful, sensual film. There are affinities with Flaherty, Dovzhenko, Renoir (the realist, the love scene in Partie de campagne, the corresponding scene here in even more extreme close-up), Painlevé, Cousteau, Tarkovsky (Solaris, the living sea), Malick, and the topical Océans. From sources I learn that Il pianeta azzurro was Franco Piavoli's first feature film. It is already a work of a master. Unknown in Finland, for instance, Piavoli's work would deserve to be much more shown outside Italy. Thank you, Stefano Antonelli, for this tip.