Francesco Golisano (Toto), Brunella Bovi (Edvige), Emma Gramatica (Leonora), Paolo Stoppa (Rappi), Guglielmo Barnabo (Mobbi), Anna Carena (Marta), Gianni Branduani (Toto Age 11)
Cast
Director – Vittorio De Sica, Screenplay – Vittorio De Sica & Cesare Zavattini with the Colaboration of Mario Chiari, Suso Cecchi D’Amico & Adolfo Franci, Based on the Novel Toto Il Buono by Cesare Zavattini, Photography (b&w) – G.R. Aldo, Music – Alessandro Cicognini, Special Effects – Ned Mann, Production Design – Guido Fiorini. Production Company – Produzioni De Sica/l’E.N.I.C..
Plot
In Milan, the infant Toto is discovered by the aging Leonora in her garden and adopted. After she dies, Toto is taken to an orphanage but upon coming of age and leaving he is rendered homeless. Another man introduces Toto to a frozen patch of open ground where the homeless have pitched tents. In the morning, Toto organises the others living there and they build a shantytown out of scavenged scrap. The camp becomes a success until the landowner wants it removed so that he can sell the land. Toto and the others go to plead with him to leave their community in peace.
Vittorio De Sica (1901-74) is considered the father of Italian neo-realism. This was a new movement in Italian cinema of the late 1940s that broke away from the cosy melodramas that marked the War years. The films of the Neo-Realist movement were, as the title says, ones with a focus on realism – they were shot outdoors, used non-professional actors, were filmed in black-and-white and concerned themes of poverty and the struggle to survive. Vittorio De Sica was not the first director to work in the field but his Bicycle Thieves (1949), the story of a man trying to retrieve his stolen bicycle because he needs it to get to his job, is considered the most famous example of this period and a genuine classic of cinema. De Sica went on to a number of other films including Umberto D (1952), Marriage Italian Style (1964) and The Garden of the Finzi-Contis (1970), as well as to make numerous acting appearances – he even turns up in Andy Warhol’s Dracula (1973).
Miracle in Milan was the second of Vittorio De Sica’s neo-realist films. It is an exquisitely directed and photographed film. Some of the most magical scenes come right near the start – in watching the silent parade that the young Toto makes as he follows the old lady’s funeral carriage through the streets; of his being released from the orphanage and becoming distracted by parades as someone steals his bag. And particularly of the scene at the frozen patch of ground where the homeless people wake in the morning and all of them gather to warm themselves under a beam of sunlight as it comes through the cloud and then have to move to another spot as it is occluded by cloud and then reappears again. Later we get the group of townspeople all gathered on seats as though for a concert to watch a sunset.
Francesco Golisano and Brunella Bovi fo flying on a broomstick
The film gains its story around the twenty-minute mark when Toto (Francesco Golisano) throws himself into building the shantytown. Today such a thing seems hopelessly naive and utopian – where I live, for instance, homeless encampments are broken up and displaced by increasingly more heavy-handed police action on a semi-regular basis. However, Francesco Golisano throws himself into the role with such a charismatic and upbeat enthusiasm and natural energy that you end up being carried along with the film’s fantasy of homelessness.
Miracle in Milan can be considered a work of Magical Realism before anybody ever coined or defined such a term. This comes towards the end of the film with the appearance of assorted fantastic elements:- the ghost of Toto’s adopted mother (Emma Gramatica) turning up; the statue at the centre of the shantytown coming to life as a dancing girl; and the quite magical final scene where first Francesco Golisano and his girlfriend Brunella Bovi take off into the air flying on a broomstick, followed by all the others from the camp as they depart off into the skies on a flotilla of broomsticks.
