Kaos · reception & legacy
1984 · Vittorio Taviani
How Kaos has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Warmly received in 1984 as proof the Taviani brothers' hot streak (Padre Padrone, The Night of the Shooting Stars) was still going, it then drifted into art-house semi-obscurity — and has since climbed back as the film Letterboxd cinephiles quietly call their masterpiece.
What's debated
The eternal anthology-film debate: fans rank the Pirandello episodes against each other and argue over whether the film only becomes transcendent in its final stretch — or whether that's unfair to everything before it.
Its footprint
Its signature image — a crow with a little bell tied round its neck, flying over the Sicilian coast to Nicola Piovani's score — is endlessly screenshotted and referenced, shorthand for the whole film; the children sliding down white pumice cliffs into the sea is close behind.
Where it stands
A beloved-but-underseen jewel of 1980s Italian cinema — the three-hour Sicilian epic cinephiles press on each other with 'trust me, it flies by.'