Primo Levi’s Journey (2007/New Yorker Film)
Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Documentary: B
Primo
Levi is an Italian Jew who became a key writer and manages to hold out alive at
the horrid Auschwitz concentration camp until it was liberated in 1945. Dante Ferrario decided to put his words to
images and retrace the man’s life journey and the result is the surprisingly
strong and powerful Primo Levi’s Journey
(2007), juxtaposing the writers words to world history broken down into several
levels.
There are
the propaganda films and agit prop of everything from Stalinism/Communism to
Nazism, including statues that still survive today and idiots like Nazi
Skinheads and old Stalinist types still clinging on to hate and failure. We also see old footage of factories once
alive and moving forward, then switch to them dead or nearly dead, followed by
those remaining and how they have to work to survive. Capitalism is new to them. Then there is the of footage of WWII,
concentration camps and Levi himself, crosscut with the same locations today
and this all adds up to a living hell of failures and upheavals that is the
life Levi lived and times he lived through.
It is
compelling as a record of the 20th Century and how nightmare dreams
collapsed while the hate and dogma that made them possible remain; the kind
Levi’s work exposes as the frauds they are.
There are so many ways this 92 minutes could have gone wrong, but this
is very well edited and for those serious about history and world politics, a
must-see.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image is a combination of new digital video
that is low def, stills, analog archive video and film footage to create the
visual points with the writings. This
becomes involving enough and the transfer does its best with the material. The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound is somewhat
stereo and has clearly and cleanly recorded voiceover by Chris Cooper. The only extra is an interview on the making
of the project, which should be viewed after seeing it.
- Nicholas Sheffo
