The Tree Of Wooden Clogs

The interview with Ermannno Olmi is a disappointment, not because he has nothing to say, but because the interviewer is more interested in his own opinion than that of his guest.

It is part of a TV film programme, called Dolly. The Tree Of Wooden Clogs has just won top prize at Cannes and deserves to be treated with more enthusiasm by the presenter, who asks perfunctory questions and never follows up answers.

Olmi says that the first draft of the script had been written 20 years earlier and left in the back of a drawer. The only reason it wasn’t transferred immediately to the wastepaper basket, like some of his other half baked ideas, was “because it represented a part of the story of my life.”

The interviewer does not investigate any further. It is a tragic missed opportunity. Instead, he points out that the non-professional actors speak their own incomprehensible dialect and the film will be shown in Italy with subtitles, or dubbed.

Olmi seems quite shy, while the interviewer is opinionated, cold and uninterested.