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. It studies humanity’s penchant for exploiting humanity in pursuit of private gain; before the big-league capitalists take over, a threadbare version of greed in the form of a small-time charlatan charges the poor for a look at the sunset. Those expecting Disney may be surprised at finding something closer to Voltaire or Carlyle. Essentially the film confronts both capitalism and utopianism, including Communist utopianism, although De Sica himself was branded a Communist by Italy’s right-wing after the appearance of this film.
Ultimately, the homeless take miraculously to the skies in search of more hospitable lands of their dreams—an index of the impossibility of finding social and economic justice in Italy. Visually it is a restoration of community, ironically, on the verge of the scattering of its members; for their community kept finding differences among them, including differences in status, asserting themselves.
Top prize at Cannes; in the States, it beat Kurosawa’s Rashômon for the foreign-language film prize of the New York critics.
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