The Night of the Shooting Stars

With its subtle mixture of wartime hardship, comedic interludes, and a hallucinatory hint of Italian magic realism, The Night of the Shooting Stars was named the best film of 1982 by the prestigious National Society of Film Critics. Drawing inspiration from their own experiences in Nazi-occupied Italy, the codirecting Taviani brothers (Paolo and Vittorio) remade this feature from their 1954 debut short "San Miniato, July 1944," framing its touching yet occasionally vague tale of wartime survival as a bedtime story, told by a loving mother from her memories as a 6-year-old, fleeing her Tuscan village in the closing days of World War II. American liberation is promised within days, but the Nazis have rigged village houses with mines, so the residents of San Martino flee to the countryside, where encounters with fascists are common and deadly. The film's dreamy nostalgia isn't as satisfying as, say, Cinema Paradiso, but it's still a lovely film, filled with quintessentially Italian vitality while proving, as one character observes, that "even true stories can end well." --Jeff Shannon