Good advice is to be found in David Forgacs’ visual essay on this disc — don’t go to Wikipedia to learn about “Italian Neorealism.” It’s not all one kind of movie. The term was in use long before the postwar years. Some of the best films in the movement were big productions, with movie stars and scenes filmed in studios.
This is a great event for Blu-ray collectors: Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan (Miracolo a Milano) is now available in Region A, in a polished restoration. I reviewed a Region B Blu-ray ten years ago, and this one bests it both for picture and sound. But the best thing is that more people will learn about De Sica’s wondrous blend of comedy, fantasy, and the unbearable reality of the impoverished and homeless — or ‘the unhoused’ as it now said, altering the ‘agency’ of having no roof over one’s head.
This is the one certified neo-realist picture I can see again anytime. It is still valid as a meditation on modern social neglect, and its ‘solution’ for the problem is both fanciful and chilling. Yet it seems optimistic about the human condition — we the audience are not punished for becoming involved with its characters. With the word ‘miracle’ in the movie we expect a religious theme, but that’s really not what we get.
With its giddy mix of neorealism and fantasy, the radically different Miracolo did not win unanimous praise on either side of the political divide in Italy. No new film genre followed its extravagant formula but it appears to have had major influence elsewhere. We learn that Colombian author Gabriel García Márques once stated that this one movie may have sparked the entire literary Magic Realism movement.
C’era una volta . . .
After a literal fairy tale prologue, De Sica’s 1951 film takes place in the familiar neorealist setting of a city still recovering from the war. It’s both a realistic social document and an outright fantasy, a Film Blanc in which magic exists, in conjunction with a benign afterlife. It celebrates the simple pleasures of people forming a community and ‘getting along,’ and takes a backhanded swipe at unfettered Capitalism. Its pointed comedy is more impactful than the average outraged social comment film, even those made by politically committed directors.
Largely written by the great Cesare Zavattini, Miracolo is a thoughtful fable overflowing with good will toward men. The opening could almost come from Mother Goose: the dotty old Lolotta (Emma Gramatica, born in 1874) finds a baby in the cabbage patch, names him ‘Totò il buono’ (The good Totò) and raises him to be cheerful, friendly and open to the wonders of the world. Lolotta passes away when Totò is still a child. On his release from the orphanage years later, the grown Totò (Francesco Golisano) befriends Alfredo (Arturo Bragaglia), a thief who tries to steal from him. They join a group of freezing homeless people huddling in an undeveloped field.
That’s when the homeless band together on a disused lot to build their own shanty town, as squatters. Totò proves to be a friendly, honest and open-hearted diplomat, smoothing over petty disputes with charm and tact. When several men claim a statue of a beautiful woman, Totò suggests that it be erected in the makeshift town square as public property.
Totò befriends the sweet, uncomplicated Edvige (Brunella Bovo of Fellini’s The White Sheik), who serves an indigent couple who still consider themselves socially superior. All join in the communal spirit save for the curmudgeonly, selfish Rappi (Paolo Stoppa). Leading with the example of his goodness, Totò creates for a few days an impossible little Utopia of tolerance and cooperation.
What a glorious everyman: Totò is a pure soul incapable of deceit or lies: he has the common good at heart, and empathizes with everyone. He commiserates with the sad thief Alfredo by splitting his possessions with him. He squints when talking to a one-eyed man, and stoops when talking to a short man. His ‘meet cute’ with the waifish Edvige has him defending her from her priggish ’employer.’ It involves a gag with buckets of water that’s priceless — and inseparable from their sweet, inoffensive natures.
Trouble comes when the bigwig developer Mobbi (Guglielmo Barnabò) buys the field. Mobbi pretends to be the squatters’ friend, saying that the poor can trust him because he has five fingers just like they do. Invited to Mobbi’s business headquarters — a massive marble building suitable for un fascista imperiale — the squatters don’t know that he’s mobilized his private security force to evict them by force. But the plutocrat’s cops and soldiers don’t count on the deceased Lolotta, who decends from heaven to give Totò a dove that grants wishes.
De Sica and his writers milk plenty of slapstick laughs from the efforts of Mobbi’s private army to dislodge the squatters. Strategic ‘dove’ miracles neutralize the attackers’ smoke bombs and water cannons, and send them fleeing in panic, momentarily at least. The homeless poor get their moment to crow and feel triumphant, but they’re just as flawed as the bourgoisie: they waste their precious heavenly wishes on the same foolish luxuries and status symbols. In her new flowing furs, Edvige’s boss Marta puts on airs, behaving in regal manner.
Totò strives to please everybody with magic wishes. He plays Pygmalion for an unloved friend, bringing the statue to life (as dancer Alba Amova). The miracle doesn’t do much good — the newly-born female spirit has a mind and agenda of her own. She dances and prances but is not romantically inclined toward the lonesome fellow who worships her: “I want to go to the big city!” Even a woman of stone knows the shanty town is someplace to get away from at the earliest opportunity.
With its open socialist message Miracle in Milan’s tone is somewhat similar to that of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Francesco Golisano and Brunella Bovo together form a bundle of innocence far sweeter than Chaplin’s Little Tramp. They express their new-found love by climbing on a pole framework as if it were a Jungle Gym, like children. As would Chaplin, Totò tells a despairing friend to have courage, to see the world as a beautiful place no matter what the ongoing disaster. Unlike The Little Tramp, Totò wants to spread joy to the world at large.
The most ‘socialist’ scene Miracle in Milan is triumphantly joyful. The squatters go on parade in their completed shanty town, singing the film’s cheerful, catchy theme song. The lyrics express their basic needs: “We want a place to sleep in / Where we can lay our heads…” Although never officially crowned, Totò becomes the cheerleader for the little society of good will. Forever cheerful, he engages with the cold world as Lolotta taught him to, by simply saying “Good morning!” to people.
The film abounds with mysterious imagery long before the outright magic begins. When a small patch of sunlight breaks through the cold clouds, the freezing poor rush together to soak it up. Only Rappi tries to hog this miserable ‘place in the sun,’ pushing his neighbors away. In another odd scene, a shanty town woman sells tickets for people to sit in some chairs she’s set up, to watch the setting sun. Gathered as a paying audience, the group waits in patient anticipation, and then applauds the finale as the sun dips below the horizon. The ticket seller has monetized nature, yet her customers are quite content. Is the spectacle a comment on simple pleasures, or an analysis of commercialized entertainment? Does being in a group make simple things more meaningful?
It’s taken me several viewings over the years to make up my mind as to the meaning of one episode. Among the homeless crowd Totò notices a white woman and a black man who are attracted to each other. But each behaves as if ashamed of their desire. Each of the would-be-lovers asks Totò for a wish, but the result is a terrible mistake, a ‘joke’ that’s not funny. At first I thought the gag was a dated race joke; now I think it’s a comment on the nature of race prejudice — it’s a limitation we inflict on ourselves.
It’s worth noting that organized religion has no place in this scheme: just by its absence De Sica and Zavattini are making a secular statement. Totò doesn’t pray for heavenly aid, and when Old Lolotta helps him she’s apparently breaking a heavenly rule. The two angels sent to retrieve her align neatly with the two poliziotti seen chasing a criminal near the film’s beginning. It seems especially telling that the finale takes place at the foot of a huge cathedral. As the fantasy winds up, the church is a prominent background for several shots despite playing no part in the human drama. It is a non-participant, inert and aloof.
Every City Is Now Milan.
As delighted as we are by Miracle in Milan, it makes us more than a bit nervous — how can this delicate fantasy possibly avoid ending in tragedy? Stories about magic wishes often conclude with dark revelations about human nature, and we certainly don’t want that. There seems no acceptable way out for Totò and his friends, in a world that would prefer that the socially marginalized just disappear: the poor and unemployed, refugees and immigrants, the inconvenient and ‘unproductive.’
There is no good solution to a universal human condition where such poverty exists side-by-side with balkanized neighborhoods guarded with machine guns. Any sentimental compromise for the squatters would be a betrayal of reality. The film’s chosen finale is inspired — simultaneously enchanting, appalling, exhilarating and as cruelly satirical as Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. After decades of socially responsible liberal cause entertainment, I have yet to see anything as clearly stated as this.
