Sands Films Cinema: Miracolo A Milano – 9 Feb 2021

Sands Films Cinema Club: online presentation of Vittorio De Sica’s 1950 magical film with a script by Cesare Zavattini.

“Totò the kind-hearted and perpetually cheerful lives with a lot of other homeless on the outskirts of Milan. A foundling discovered by a kindly eccentric (Emma Gramatica, marvelous) in a cabbage patch, upon her death he was consigned to a state orphanage from which, having reached his majority, he has just been released into the (literally) cold world. Totò becomes leader amongst the poor, a community activist opposing the capitalists who wish to appropriate the patch of land inhabited by the homeless now that oil gushes from it.

A fairy tale for grownups and a compelling satirical comedy, Vittorio De Sica’s Miracolo a Milano addresses postwar Italy’s social upheavals and economic woes, even though the novel of his on which Cesare Zavattini based his script was written ten years earlier.

Dennis Grunes