Miracle in Milan () is a 1951 Italian fantasy film directed by Vittorio De Sica. The screenplay was co-written by Cesare Zavattini, based on his novel Totò il Buono. The picture stars Francesco Golisano, Emma Gramatica, Paolo Stoppa, and Guglielmo Barnabò.
The film, told as a neo-realist fable, explains the lives of a poverty-stricken group in post-war Milan, Italy. In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."
Plot
This fantasy tale tells of Totò who, found as a baby in a cabbage patch, is adopted by Lolotta, a wise and kind old woman. When Lolotta dies he moves to an orphanage. At adulthood Totò (Francesco Golisano) leaves the orphanage and ends up in a shantytown squatter colony on the outskirts of Milan.
Totò's organizational ability, learned at the orphanage, and his simple kindness and optimistic outlook acquired from Lolotta bring structure to the colony. He fosters a sense of happiness and well-being among the dispossessed who live there.
Businessmen come and haggle over the ownership of the land but the squatters are left alone to live there.
Oil is discovered under the colony when they are making a hole for a maypole during a festival. It forms a fountain in the middle of the camp and at first is thought to be water.
Mobbi the land owner hears about the oil from the scheming squatter, Rappi, and tries to evict the squatters using an army of police.
During this crisis Totò is given a magic dove by the ghost of Lolotta and he uses its powers to grant wishes to those who ask. The camp takes on a surreal appearance as every secret wish is granted.
Eventually the dove is taken back by two angels who object to a mortal using its magic powers.
Without the protection of the dove the camp is overrun by police and its occupants taken away in police wagons to be imprisoned.
Toto's sweetheart, Edvige, replaces it with an ordinary dove and hands this to him through the bars of the police wagon in Piazza del Duomo outside Milan's cathedral.
Totò uses the dove to wish for the freedom of his friends and because of his good faith it is granted. The police wagons fall apart and the squatters fly away on broomsticks seized from the street sweepers in Milan's central square.
They circle around the Cathedral and then away, "towards a land where good morning really means good morning."
Cast
Emma Gramatica as the old lady, Lolotta
Francesco Golisano as Totò
Paolo Stoppa as Rappi, the schemer
Guglielmo Barnabò as Mobbi, the landowner
Brunella Bovo as Edvige, Toto's sweetheart
Anna Carena as Marta, the aristocratic Signora Altezzosa
Alba Arnova as the statue in the camp square
Flora Cambi as Signora Altezzosa's maid and an unhappy lover
Virgilio Riento as a police sergeant
Arturo Bragaglia as Alfredo
Erminio Spalla as Gaetano
Riccardo Bertazzolo as the Strong Man
Checco Rissone as secondary police commander
Angelo Prioli as supreme police commander
Gianni Branduani as Totò at eleven years
Production
The film's principal location was waste ground, near Milan's Lambrate railway station.
Vittorio De Sica wrote that he made the film in order to show how the "common man" can exist given the realities of life: "It is true that my people have already attained happiness after their own fashion; precisely because they are destitute, these people still feel - as the majority of ordinary men perhaps no longer do - the living warmth of a ray of winter sunshine, the simple poetry of the wind. They greet water with the same pure joy as Saint Francis did."
The Milan Cathedral serves as a focal location in the film, and can also be viewed as symbolic of the miracle to which the film's title refers.
American special effects specialist Ned Mann was hired for the film. The picture would be Mann's final project. Vittorio De Sica, in neo-realist fashion, used both professional and non-professional actors.
Reception
Critical response
The film premiered in Italy on 8 February 1951. Later it was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in April 1951. In the United States it opened wide on December 17, 1951.