In 1941, one year after Italy joined Germany against the Allies in World War II, a small group of misfit Italian soldiers is sent to a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea for four months of lookout duty. The soldiers include a lieutenant who likes art, a macho sergeant, a farmer accompanied by his beloved donkey Silvana, and other quirky people. They are not very good soldiers, but a cross section of average, independent men. The soldiers anticipate attack from outside and on the island, and take all sorts of inept precautions. They find a small town with no people. That night, they see bombing on the horizon and by radio interception, discover that the ship that was intended to pick them up has been destroyed. Mysteriously, people reappear in the village: the villagers say they hid because the Germans had taken all the men, but having seen that the Italians are absolutely harmless they have decided to return to their lives. It's not long before everyone's sunny nature appears. The Italian soldiers, unacquainted with a war they clearly do not sense as theirs, are absorbed into the life, heat and landscape of the idyllic island. The localorthodox priest asks the lieutenant, an amateur painter, to restore the murals in his church. Two soldiers, who are brothers, befriend a lovely young woman, a shepherdess. They eventually consummate their friendship with the shepherdess who in turn - loves them both equally. Sergeant Lo Russo, the only member of the crew with a fiery spirit for war, takes up folk dancing & begins to reflect on his place in the universe. Meanwhile, the shyest soldier, Farina, falls in love with the island's prostitute, named Vasilissa. In their old age, three of the men are reunited on the island
Mediterraneo was released in Italy on 31 January 1991 by Penta Distribuzione before premiering at the 1991 Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September 1991, where its North American distribution rights were purchased by Miramax Films. Internationally, the film was truncated by 10 minutes, resulting in an 86-minute cut. The film was submitted as the Italian entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in November 1991. It was released in the United States in March 1992, a week before the Academy Awards and made its worldwide run over the next two years.
Box office
The film grossed $4.5 million in the United States and Canada, and was the highest-grossing non-English language film at the US box office that year but was later surpassed by Indochine which was released at Christmas 1992 and grossed most of its revenue in 1993.
Critical response
Mediterraneo was received positively by critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 79% score, based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 6.33/10. In 1996, Roger Ebert stated that this was the only film he ever walked out of because it was "utterly without redeeming merit".
The film has been criticised for its portrayal of the Royal Italian Army during World War II because it employs a comparable story arc to the Clean Wehrmacht myth that developed in post-war Germany. This was the belief that the Heer was noble and apolitical, unlike the National Socialists and the SS. The film uses the post-war Italian Republic narrative that "Italians are decent people", compared to the ideologically-motivated and brutal Germans who persecuted and murdered Jews and other ethnic groups throughout occupied Europe. Modern historians have now challenged this narrative: research has shown the "gentle Italians" belief was created to avoid "a public debate on collective responsibility, guilt and denial, repentance and pardon" for the Italian Army's actual historical conduct and behaviour during the Second World War.
