Wednesday 6 November 2013

Travels With My Film-Life: Italy - The Grand Tour - De Sica in Miraculous Milan

The last stage of our film-life tour of Italy. We are in post-war Milan amongst the destitute and homeless who are about to participate in a miracle.
Cos this is..... Vittorio De Sica's "Miracle in Milan".
And me I do think I will visit a gritty piece of Italian Neo-realism like his famous "Bicycle Thieves"... but no.....
With this film we are whisked into a social satire, a fantasy that starts with a baby found in an old woman's cabbage patch and which then takes us through the founding of a Utopian shanty-town.... its demolition through greed.... and its inhabitants' transportation through the miracle of a magic dove... what is that? The Holy Spirit? Love?

I don't rightly know but it was a surprising fantastic journey... both bitingly realistic and  optimistic... or was that a desperate resort to magic?

Ha-ha! magical Neo-realism that's what it be.

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