The Best Movies I've Never Seen Before: Miracle in Milan (1951)

Miracle in Milan (1951) *** ½
Directed by: Vittorio De Sica.
Written by: Cesare Zavattini & Vittorio De Sica & Suso Cecchi d'Amico & Mario Chiari & Adolfo Franci based on the novel by Zavattini.
Starring: Francesco Golisano (Totò), Emma Gramatica (La vecchia Lolotta), aolo Stoppa (Rappi), Guglielmo Barnabò (Mobbi), Brunella Bovo (Edvige), Anna Carena (Marta, la signora altezzosa), Arturo Bragaglia (Alfredo), Erminio Spalla (Gaetano).

Vittorio De Sica was one of the pioneers of the neo-realist movement in Italy following WWII. He had actually started with the style a little earlier than that, with films like The Children Are Watching Us (1943). But his most well known films followed the war – in particular The Bicycle Thief (1948), about a father trying to support his family after the war, and my personal favorite Umberto D. (1952) about an old civil servant, who can no longer support himself, or his lovable dog, on the measly pension he receives. These films used non-professional actors, were shot on the actual locations, and represented life in Italy how it really was – hard and stricken with poverty. In many ways, Miracle in Milan (1951), which he made between his two neo-realist masterpieces, is very similar to the other two films. It certainly has the same basic concern – about poverty amongst Italians, and how no one around them seems to care. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. But while Miracle in Milan is part neo-realist film, it is also part fantasy film. The two styles, which logically should be polar opposites and not mesh together at all, works surprisingly well for most of the films running time.

The film is about Toto (Francesco Golisano), who we first meet as a baby, abandoned in an old woman’s garden. She takes him in, and raises her as her own – until she dies, and he is shipped off to the orphanage. But none of this seems to affect Toto that much – he spends the entire movie smiling, and helping people. When he is released for the orphanage, he even has his bag full of his possessions stolen. He walks after the thief, and tells him there must be some sort of misunderstanding, because that is his bag. The thief turns out to be a fairly nice guy – just down on his luck. He gives Toto his bag back, and then invites him to stay at his place – which is just a shanty in the middle of field, where many others have built shanty homes as well. Toto decides to take the lead on this, and soon they are building an entire shanty village in that field – and the downtrodden from all over show up, and Toto finds a place for them. Things seem to be going well, until the owner of the property shows up. He wants to sell it to another rich man. The two comically negotiate, with the potential buyer eventually backing out. But when oil is discovered on the property not longer after, he does buy it – and determines to kick the inhabits out. And that is when the fantasy starts.

While The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D. are clearly dramatic films – tragedies really – Miracle in Milan tells a similar story almost as a comedy. We didn’t really see the rich in either of those other two films – the existed as people far removed from the poor – but here they are in the film, and De Sica portrays them as buffoons. The comic negotiation between the two rich people reaches absurdly hilarious heights, and they continue to shout numbers at each other, that seem to have little relation to reality. Later, when the rich man has sent his goon squad to throw the inhabits of the shanty town out, Toto and other leaders in the community go and see him. He allows them in, but doesn’t really listen to him – he keeps picking up the phone and screaming “Buy” into it. He humors them by listening to their song, and tells them everything will be fine – only to call the police in for an inept raid (that he will also run). The rich here are completely divorced from the reality of the situation being faced by these poor men, women and children – and they don’t much care either.

I really liked the first hour of Miracle in Milan. It is here where the satire is at its best, and it’s hard not to like the ever cheerful Toto as a hero. De Sica is essentially making the same point he made in The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D. about the poor and displaced, and how the government and the rich simply do not seem to care. The last half hour of the film was slightly more troubling to me though. When things are at their bleakest, and it looks like they will be run out of their homes, Toto’s long departed mother shows up as a ghost and gives him a magical dove – that will allow him to wish for whatever he wants. It starts off amusing – and Toto wishes for all sorts of wild things, nothing for himself mind you, but for everyone else. But I think De Sica allows this segment to go on far too long. It gets repetitious, and to be honest rather dull at points, until he redeems the movie with the finale.

Overall, I quite enjoyed Miracle in Milan. I knew little of the film before watching it, and I assumed that it was going to be another of De Sica’s neo-realist movies. I was mistaken, but gladly in the first hour. De Sica would go onto to make other comedies in his career, so it shouldn’t have surprised me too much. I even think the switch to fantasy film in the final third works to a point. Had De Sica cut a little for this part, I think Miracle in Milan would probably be a masterwork. As it stands, it’s an excellent little comic film. One that deserves more of an audience.

DVD Views: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971)

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971) *** ½
Directed By: Vitorrio De Sica.
Written By: Vittorio Bonicelli & Ugo Pirro based on the novel by Giorgio Bassani.
Starring: Lino Capolicchio (Giorgio), Dominique Sanda (Micòl Finzi Contini), Fabio Testi (Bruno Malnate), Romolo Valli (Giorgio's Father), Helmut Berger (Alberto), Camillo Cesarei (Micol's Father), Inna Alexeievna (Micol's Grandmother), Katina Morisani (Micol's Mother), Barbara Pilavin (Giorgio's Mother).

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis opens in Italy in 1938. Mussolini has already risen to power, and he is started to put more and more restrictions on the Jews in the area. The latest offence is that Jews are no longer allowed to marry non-Jews, have non-Jewish servants, attend public schools and other offences. It is strange to watch how the two Jewish families at the heart of the movie react to what is going on.

The middle class family debates what is going on, leading to arguments. Giorgio is enraged by what is happening, and does not want to accept it. When he is kicked out of the library at his school, he demands to see the director, who apologizes for kicking him out, but he has to. He doesn’t make the rules, and he has a family. “All of Italy has a family”, Giorgio replies before storming out. His father tries to rationalize things. No, he does not really like the restrictions, but the Fascists here are not nearly as bad as the Nazis, he says. They still have their fundamental freedoms. They are still Italian after all.

But the Finzi-Continis don’t even seem to notice what is happening. They are exceedingly wealthy, live in a gorgeous estate in their small town of Ferraro, where they are the wealthiest, most influential people in town. If they aren’t allowed at the tennis club anymore, who cares? They have their own court where their adult children Micol (Dominique Sanda) and Alberto (Helmut Berger) can have their friends over. Only Giorgio is Jewish, but the rest like them anyway. They stay locked away in their big house, and their vast garden, and ignore the world outside. It cannot possibly effect them.

At the heart of the movie is the relationship between Giorgio and Micol. He has been in love with her since they were kids, even though back then he didn’t get to see her very often. She and her brother were homeschooled, but they had to come out once in awhile. At the time, Micol seemed to like him as well, always smiling and laughing and waving when they saw each other. Now that they are older, Giorgio wants to move forward with their relationship, but Micol rebuffs him time and again. Why? They obviously like each other – we can see that in scene after scene. She does not like the guy she is having an affair with very much, but she does it anyway. Micol is trying so hard to hold onto the past – hold onto the image she has of Giorgio when they were kids, that she will not allow herself to move forward. This is also why she never leaves the estate her family owns. Outside of those walls, that garden, is an outside world where she doesn’t know what is going to happen. Inside, she is safe. Right?

The film was directed by Vittorio De Sica, who is best known for his neo-realist works of the 1940s and 1950s. This film is not like those ones at all. Those films, that all took place in postwar Italy, had a reality so harsh for its characters that they could not hide from it. They were poor, they had nothing, and they worked constantly to try and survive. The characters in this movie are different as they have everything, and even though storm clouds are on the horizon, they choose to ignore them. Only Giorgio seems to fully grasp what is going on, everyone else seems to want to rationalize what is happening or ignore it. They do so at their own peril.

DVD Views: Shoeshine (1946)

Shoeshine (1946) ****
Directed By: Vittorio De Sica.
Written By: Sergio Amidei & Adolfo Franci & Cesare Giulio Viola & Cesare Zavattini.
Starring: Franco Interlenghi (Pasquale Maggi), Rinaldo Smordoni (Giuseppe Filippucci), Annielo Mele (Raffaele), Bruno Ortenzi (Arcangeli), Emilio Cigoli (Staffera).

Like the best of his films, Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine tells an incredibly simple story with powerful emotions at its core. The story is not complicated, the characters not difficult to read, yet the emotional power the film has over its audience is stunning. Like he would later do in The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D., De Sica’s film is a neo-realist classic in the best sense.

It is post war Italy, and Pasquale and Giuseppe are two poor boys in Rome, who no longer attend school, but work as shoeshine boys, and doing whatever other odd jobs they can find. Pasquale’s family is dead, and he stays with Giuseppe, whose family is poor and needs him to earn money, because no one else in the family can. Theirs is a hard life, and the only joy they take in it is by going to the stables and riding a horse they have their heart set on buying. They do not really need to own the horse, but in a sense they do. It’s their dream, and without it, they may cease to be able to continue on.

Giuseppe’s brother comes to them one day with a job. Take two American army blankets to an old fortune teller who will pay good money for them. They do this, and they’ll make 500 lire, which they really need since they are only 3000 lire short of buying the horse. They agree to the job, but it doesn’t go quite how they think it will. After they sell the blankets, Giuseppe’s brother and some friends arrive posing as police, and rob the woman blind. Pasquale and Giuseppe get a bonus for not saying anything – enough to buy the horse, which they ride through town and feel like kings for a day.

But the fortune teller is able to tell the police who the kids who sold her the blanket were. They are arrested and thrown into a juvenile jail, which they are told they will stay in until they give up their adult accomplices. They steadfastly refuse to say anything, but then the guards play a trick on Pasquale, pretending to beat Giuseppe with a belt, until Pasquale confesses to get them to stop hurting his friend. When Giuseppe finds out, he feels like Pasquale has betrayed him and his family, and the former best friends become enemies.

De Sica was one of the founding members of Italy’s neo-realist movement – a style which can still be seen today in the films of the Dardenne brothers and the great Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. At the time, there was very little money to make films in Italy, so directors like De Sica made films on the streets, instead of in studios, and used non-professional actors, to save on money. The result were films like Shoeshine that have a simple power to them, because they seem so real. Unlike the German filmmakers at the time, who seemed to stick their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge their countries sins (something that to a certain extent is just now being corrected), the Italian masters wanted to show their country, warts and all. De Sica’s later film, Umberto D, led to a reformation of pensions for civil servants, even while the Minister of Culture decried the film saying things were not quite that bleak.

In Shoeshine, De Sica has progressed from his earlier films – like the little seen The Children Are Watching Us – to make a genuinely great film about post war Italy. His affinity with children would remain throughout his career, and his ability to drawn natural performances from them remains unrivaled. Perhaps the kids in this movie were so natural because the reality of their lives wasn’t so different from that being portrayed on screen. But whatever the reason, Shoeshine remains a great film – a film that draws us in to a world full of children who are forced to grow up too fast, who stubbornly hold onto to childish dreams, because really, that’s all they have. Reality has encroached their lives far too early.