Miracle in Milan
(Miracolo a Milano)
With Francesco Golisano, Emma Gramatica, Paolo Stoppa.
France, 1951, 35mm, black & white, 95 min.
Italian with English subtitles.
Between The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D, De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini continued their collaboration on this magical neorealist story, which begins "Once upon a time." Winner of the Grand Prize in Cannes, Miracle in Milan’s backdrop is postwar Milan, where an orphan leads the homeless, living in a shantytown, to build a better life. Optimism and magical doves and broomsticks alternate with despair in a satirical treatment of the inequities existing in Italy after WWII.
One of the most fertile periods in the history of film, the French New Wave saw the appearance of new and stylistically innovative films by young directors like Truffaut, who was 25 when he made Les Mistons. During their summer holidays in the French town of Nîmes, a group of mischievous schoolboys has fun at the expense of two lovers—a harmless tomfoolery that ends in tragedy.