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Miracle in Milan (1951) is the story of Totò, an orphan who, upon coming of age, leaves the orphanage and finds himself on the streets of Milan with no one and no job, eventually ending up living in an abandoned village, a dump, with a community of homeless people.
Totò is pure, kind, someone who greets you with a genuine good morning even if he doesn't know you.
The film is very beautiful, poetic, surreal, allegorical. Light and enchanting, Miracle in Milan is continuously suspended between dream and reality.
A fairy tale, indeed, that the world is not as Totò would like it to be (a new Candide - Voltaire - someone who could really cast the first stone) ...and the homeless will soon find out when a wealthy industrialist tries to evict them from the dump because he has bought the land and wants to build buildings there.
This time, however, the rich and ruthless businessman will have to reckon with a miracle...
De Sica, once again in collaboration with Cesare Zavattini, tells the world of the poor, those who have nothing, this time even a little city of homeless people, and once again decisively takes their side.
Once again, the film was not well received by Christian-democratic Italy nor by the progressive side, pointing the finger at the fact that it was too evangelical and consolatory...
It's precisely this dichotomy that makes me reflect on the enormous gap between theory (the film) and practice (reality).
Indeed, because there is no world where everyone greets each other with a genuine kindness and enthusiasm. A world where goodness exists, a world where people truly care for each other. A distinctly communist film because the concept of the individual is completely nullified in favor of the collective. Totò will do everything to ensure everyone is well or at least that everyone gets what they deserve in equal measure and without favoritism.
And yet, Communist Russia even banned the film as it was deemed not in line with Marxist-Leninist philosophy (probably because they found it unacceptable that such a complete concept of communism was conveyed by a group of homeless people, essentially people who do not work).
The film also boasts top-notch special effects for its time (De Sica turned to the masters in the field who, then as now, were the Americans). For this reason, the production costs were very high, which created substantial financial problems for him.
Legendary is the scene of the homeless flying on broomsticks to a better world, a scene that inspired Spielberg in E.T.
And when the sunbeam appears and the homeless jostle to get their small piece to warm themselves? Well, there are many memorable scenes, no doubt about it.
A magical film, I also saw Chaplin and Lubitsch in it.
I almost saw a miracle in it.
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