Bread and Chocolate (1973)

Nino Manfredi gives a wonderfully comic and sensitive performance as Nino, an Italian working as a waiter in Switzerland. Absent three years from his wife and children--for whom he is theoretically raising money to join him in Swiss prosperity--Nino is a little like David Bowie's dispirited alien in The Man Who Fell to Earth, an outsider too reinvented to return to his roots. Lonely, earthy, and clumsy among the polished locals, Nino has a series of Chaplinesque disasters that ultimately cost him his work permit and resident status. Instead of leaving the country, however, he sneaks back in and stays with a reclusive, beautiful woman (Anna Karina) with something of her own to hide. The adventures don't end there: like a modern Candide, Nino moves from one situation to the next, clinging to his optimism but also a strong suspicion he can never return home. Director Franco Brusati (Forget Venice) has made a rare comedy here that is both light and tough at the same time, with a hero whose clownish trappings don't so much soften his anxieties as make him more sympathetic for suffering them. --Tom Keogh Amazon.com

To live and survive in foreign lands !

An uneducated Italian man tries to find new landscapes of hopes and illusions seeking work in Switzerland,. But sometimes what you seek and what you find don't coincide.

A cult movie in many art houses around the world and certainly one of the amusing but devastating films around this delicate and terrible drama about the inner immigrants.

January 12, 2008

Searching for self

The humour and lonliness of the mid life journey is so wonderfully portrayed here. "At least when you lose, you get to have a rest."
An unexpected surprise to find this one. Don't worry about about missing a few of the subtitles, this movie is too good to miss.
March 17, 2007

Bread and Chocolate

This is a great movie, about Italian immigrants in Switzerland. Any one who bought this DVD edition could tel me if it is in original language (Italian)? And which are the subtitles avaliable? Thanks. February 18, 2005

Lousy Copy

While the movie is delightful, this DVD should have been condemned. The titles are unreadable 30 to 40% of the time. What slappdash work on a good movie. The producers should be ashamed. February 12, 2003

Great movie - AWFUL DVD!

This film is as significant as it is delightful because it is even more relevant today than in the 1970s. Today, most of Europe is populated by immigrant workers from all parts of the continent and Africa. And there is still the same kind of pecking order (those of you who've seen the film forgive that pun!): The Swiss look down on Italians, North Italians look down on Southern Italians, they in turn look down on Turks etc. The film bravely laughs at all our cultural flaws and salutes them.

And Nino Manfredi... what a gem! Part Charlie Chaplin and part Marcello Mastroianni, he's a wonderful blend of pathos and sweetness with just the right drop of vulgarity.
BUT...! Be forewarned, the DVD is the worst I've ever seen! The print they transferred is FULL of scratches, pops, and splices that chop off whole sentences. The light scenes are often washed out and the dark scenes are far too dark. And there are a number of occasions where the subtitles were lost in the white background. I can't imagine that they couldn't find a decent print of this film anywhere. Still, if you can't find a rental copy anywhere, it's still better to have even this awful version than no version at all. August 6, 2002

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