A late-career triumph for De Sica, this adaptation of Giorgio Bassani’s famous novel won the director his final Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Garden is set in Ferrara during World War II, where the wealthy Jewish family of the Finzi-Continis finds refuge from the horror that is engulfing Europe in their sequestered, aristocratic lifestyle. But as Mussolini’s rapprochement with Hitler takes hold and the Fascists begin to purge and persecute local Jews, the family’s sheltered world begins to collapse. De Sica’s flashbacks evoke the working of memory, and a powerful sense of loss: of a world, a people, a culture. The lovely Dominique Sanda brings melancholy glamour to her role as the family’s daughter Micol.