The Truce (1974 film)

The Truce (Spanish: La tregua) is a 1974 Argentine film directed by Sergio Renán and co-written with Aída Bortnik, based on the eponymous novel by Mario Benedetti. It was the first Argentine film to be nominated for an Academy Award (the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film).

Plot

The film opens on Martín Santomé's (Héctor Alterio) 49th birthday, a widower and the father of three children: the eldest, the embittered Esteban (Luis Brandoni); the caring middle-child Blanca (Marilina Ross) and Jaime (Oscar Martínez), a closeted homosexual. He goes to work thinking they have forgotten his birthday, and once at the office, he assigns two new employees to their jobs: the effeminate, nervous Santini (Antonio Gasalla) and the young Laura (Ana María Picchio), with whom he soon develops a bond. Back home, Martín is surprised with a party thrown by his children.

After having a one-night stand with a woman he met on the bus (Norma Aleandro), Martín starts going through a series of events that alter his life completely. Santini has a nervous breakdown at work and rants against the complacency of his co-workers; he is subsequently replaced, though the breakdown marks Martín and forces him to look at his own life. His son Jaime finally comes out and decides to leave home to save the family from embarrassment and further complications. Topping it all, Martín, who has befriended Laura, professes his love for her at a café and implores her to look beyond the age difference (he is 49, she is 24) and give him a chance. She accepts.

The Truce

The Truce (Italian title: La tregua) is a book by the Italian author Primo Levi. It describes his experiences returning from the concentration camp at Auschwitz after the Second World War. The Truce, the literal translation of the title, is the name of the translation published in Britain; the US title is The Reawakening.

The historian Fritz Stern, in a brief review in Foreign Affairs, wrote that The Reawakening "charts Levi's incredibly circular return to Italy via Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Here people and landscapes come vividly alive in a bizarre, often comical series of events and human encounters; a truly remarkable tale."

Levi himself reminisces a bit about a character in the book in his Paris Review interview: "Have you read my book The Reawakening? You remember Mordo Nahum? I had mixed feelings toward him. I admired him as a man fit for every situation. But of course he was very cruel to me. He despised me because I was not able to manage. I had no shoes. He told me, Remember, when there is war, the first thing is shoes, and second is eating. Because if you have shoes, then you can run and steal. But you must have shoes. Yes, I told him, well you are right, but there is not war any more. And he told me, Guerra es siempre. There is always war."

The Truce (disambiguation)

The Truce may refer to:

See also

The Truce (1997 film)

The Truce (Italian: La Tregua) is a 1997 film directed by Francesco Rosi, written by Tonino Guerra, based on Primo Levi's memoir, The Truce. The film deals with Primo Levi's experiences returning to Italy in 1945 after the Red Army liberated the concentration camp at Auschwitz during the Second World War. This was Rosi's final film before his death in 2015.

Plot

Although liberated on January 27, 1945, Levi did not reach Turin until October 19 of that year. After spending some time in a Soviet camp for former concentration camp inmates, he embarked on an arduous journey home in the company of Italian former prisoners of war from the Italian Army in Russia. His long railway journey home to Turin took him on a circuitous route from Poland, through Russia, Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany.

Cast