Summaries

Synopsis

The film opens on April 25, 1945, the day Italy is liberated from the fascists. The peasants on an estate in Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy are shown attempting to join the partisans and place the owner of the estate, Alfredo Berlinghieri, under arrest. A balding, middle-aged man named Attila and woman named Regina are seen attempting to flee the farm but are attacked by women laborers wielding pitchforks. The narrative moves back to the start of the century.....

On January 27, 1901 (the day of the death of renowned composer Giuseppe Verdi), two babies are born on the estate within minutes apart from each other. They are Alfredo Berlinghieri and Olmo Dalcò who come from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Alfredo is from a family of wealthy landowners led by his abusive but popular grandfather Alfredo the Elder (Burt Lancaster), while Olmo is an illegitimate peasant son of an unmarried teenage peasant girl living off the estate whose grandfather Leo Dalcò (Sterling Hayden) is the foreman and peasant strong man who verbally and spiritually carries a duel of wits with both the peasants as well as his employer, but without ever reaching violence with Elder Alfredo's bidding. While growing up, the young Alfredo (Paolo Pavesi as a child) is somewhat rebellious and despises the falseness of his family, in particular his weak but cynical father Giovanni. Alfredo meets and befriends Olmo (Roberto Maccanti as a child), who is being raised as a socialist. During this time, Leo leads labor strikes against the unfair working conditions on the farm.

The two become friends throughout their childhood, despite the social differences of their families. In 1908 when Alfredo is age 7, his grandfather, suffering from gout, dementia, and other ailments, commits suicide by hanging himself in the dairy barn. As a result, Alfredo the Younger's father, Giovanni (Romolo Valli), inherits the plantation.

Shortly thereafter, Olmo leaves the plantation and joins a socialist youth movement and later enlists with the Italian army during World War I and goes off to fight on the front lines in northern Italy while Alfredo stays behind to learn how to run his family's large plantation.

In 1919, Olmo (Gérard Depardieu as an adult) returns after the war ends and has a warm reunion with Alfredo (Robert De Niro as an adult) and their friendship resumes. However during Olmo's time away, Alfredo's father has hired Attila Mellanchini (Donald Sutherland) as his new foreman following the death of Olmo's own grandfather, Leo a few years earlier. Attila is sadistic man who becomes taken with fascism, especially after the fascists come to power in 1922.

Attila eventually incorporates his new belief system in his dealings with the Berlinghieri workers; he treats them cruelly and accuses them of treason against Fascist Italy. Several are killed by Attila himself. Alfredo's father, Giovanni, eventually dies from an illness and Alfredo inherits the vast estate as its sole heir. As the new padrone (master) of the plantation, Alfredo does little to challenge or halt Attila's evil actions.

During the 1920s, the intimacy and lack thereof in their respective relationships with others is highlighted in their love lives as both Alfredo and Olmo cannot seem to hook up with the right woman to be with. In one encounter, Alfredo and Olmo attempt to have a threesome with a local prostitute only to have her go into an epileptic fit which stops the threesome sexual encounter before it begins.

In 1930, Alfredo meets and marries a gorgeous, demure Frenchwoman, named Ada Chiostri Polan (Dominique Sanda), whom is a friend of his wealthy uncle Ottavio (Werner Bruhns), while Olmo marries Anita (Stefania Sandrelli), a fellow left-wing idealist who, like him, shares in the enthusiasm of the cause of workers' rights in the vein of socialism. Ada, however, sinks into alcoholism when confronted with the reality of the emptiness of her relationship with Alfredo.

Anita dies tragically in childbirth (off-camera), bringing another member into the community; a daughter whom Olmo names after his late wife. As Olmo takes on his fateful role of being a single father to his daughter and leader among the poor farmers and their families. Olmo's daughter, Anita the Younger (Anna Henkel-Grönemeyer), grows into a young and resourceful teenager whom is supportive of her father's socialist beliefs.

As Olmo takes on his fateful role of leader among the poor farmers and their families, he clashes several times with Attila. The latter, whose psychopathic tendencies have been revealed via the murders of a cat and a small boy (the latter at Alfredo and Ada's wedding and for which Olmo is initially blamed), commits further atrocities.

During the winter of 1935, Alfredo proves a weak leader, bending to the ruling National Fascist Party. He finds Ada getting drunk at a local bar during a snowy Christmas Eve while everyone else attends a midnight mass. At the same time, Attila and his wife Regina (Laura Betti), who is equally cruel and sadistic as he is, are on their way to church when they pass by the house of Signora Pioppi (Alida Valli) a slightly insane widow whose house is in danger of foreclosure. She lures Attila and Regina into her home and locks them in the parlor hoping to intimidate them into settling her debts. But Attila and Regina murder her and make it up to look like a suicide... thus claiming her house for themselves.

A few years later in the early 1940s as World War II rages, Attila becomes a fresh target of ridicule at the hands of the peasants; led by Olmo, they take turns throwing manure at him after Attila tries to sell Olmo like a slave. Olmo and his daughter Anita flee in separate directions to keep themselves from being killed by the fascists, and Attila reacts to the humiliation by tearing up Olmo's house with his black-shirts before caging the peasants on the Berlinghieri compound and indiscriminately shooting them. Alfredo finally stands up to Attila and fires him, but discovers that Ada has already left him.

The film comes full circle when on April 25, 1945 as the padrone, Alfredo is captured by a teenage peasant boy carrying a rifle. Attila is also captured when he and Regina try to flee the region. Attila is stabbed (non-fatally) several times by women wielding pitchforks and is imprisoned in the Berlinghieri pig sty. He is later executed by the peasants in a local cemetary (while they cut off most of Regina's hair), who have discovered that Attila had raped and killed a young boy (ironically, the son of one of the most fervent supporters of fascism as an antidote to socialism) several years prior in a fit of rage at Alfredo's wedding and had also murdered Signora Pioppi, whose husband had been economically ruined by Alfredo, in order to steal her wealth and home.

Alfredo is brought before Olmo's workers tribunal to stand trial in a kangaroo-like court with Anita the Younger presiding over as the overseer and stenographer. Many workers come forth and accuse Alfredo of letting them suffer in squalor while he (and his social class) profited from their labors and on top of that, he did nothing to stop the sadistic Attila. Alfredo is sentenced to death, but his execution is prevented after Olmo explains that the padrone is already dead even though Alfredo lives... that is, the social system has been overthrown with the end of the war. As soon as the verdict is overturned, however, representatives of the new government, which includes the Communist Party, arrive and call on the peasants to turn in their arms. Olmo convinces the peasants to do so, overcoming their skepticism. However, Anita the Younger leads all of the peasants away in celebration over the end of the war and of the ruling class taking over. Alone with Olmo, Alfredo declares to him: "The padrone is alive", indicating the struggle between the working and ruling classes is destined to continue.

The film ends with the middle aged Alfredo and Olmo playfully tackling each other as they did in their childhood, then the scene suddenly jumps forward several years to the present day 1976, with the elderly Alfredo and Olmo walking along a railway track. Alfredo lies down in the center of the tracks as his younger self and the younger Olmo would do as a game while a train would run over the tracks, but Alfredo and Olmo would emerge unharmed as they would lie perfectly still. Alfredo appears to lay himself across the tracks as a train approaches in a clear attempt at suicide as if he has chosen to end his life at that time. The final shot shows the train traveling over the younger Alfredo lying perfectly still in the center of the tracks.