Sightlines · reception
How The Tree of Wooden Clogs was received
1978 · Ermanno Olmi · The Tree of Wooden Clogs on Sightlines
The arc
It won the Palme d'Or in 1978 and was hailed instantly, though some left-leaning Italian critics grumbled that its peasants were too pious and patient — the anti-1900, basically. The 4K restoration and Criterion release settled the matter: it's now firmly canonized as one of the great humanist epics.
What’s debated
The eternal split: is three hours of farm chores, prayers and seasons a transcendent act of attention or a beautiful endurance test — and was Olmi's devout, patient view of peasant life a corrective to Bertolucci's 1900 or a cop-out?
Its footprint
It's the touchstone people reach for whenever a new slow, rural, non-professional-cast epic appears — every review of films like Le Quattro Volte or Happy as Lazzaro seems contractually obliged to mention it.
Where it stands
A 'quiet masterpiece' with a fierce following — a slow-cinema rite of passage that Letterboxd devotees treat as a you-haven't-really-watched-movies-until credential.
Did you know? The entire cast were non-professional locals from the Bergamo countryside — actual farming families speaking Bergamasque dialect — and Olmi did it nearly single-handed, serving as his own writer, cinematographer and editor.