A decade before DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE/’61, the most iconic of all commedia all'italiana titles*, writer/director Pietro Germi, like so many others, was still turning to Italian Neo-Realism for guidance. So even with Federico Fellini co-scripting, this immigration melodrama gets its start firmly planted in the naturalism of Sicily's rocky soil. Its story remarkably close to what you’d encounter today with the major difference that the borders being illegally crossed all within Italy. Or are till the very end. In a small Sicilian town, the closing of the local sulfur mine leaves most of the locals unemployed, willing to give their small savings to a smuggler promising passage and jobs in France. Naturally, the guy’s a swindler, their money already mailed to an accomplice when a mixup at Rome’s train terminal puts everyone on the run; government agents in pursuit; couples split/lost in the city, the lucky ones reunited in police stations before being ordered back to Sicily . . . or else. Cutting loose, some grab temp farm labor, unaware they’re scabbing against a labor union, the few now left, clamoring into unmarked trucks, clawing their way to a dangerous mountain-pass border crossing. Germi pushes the melodrama till things start looking like a ‘well-made’ play. But the cast (headed by Raf Vallone; with pros in most of the leads) is empathetic as hell (those big-eyed bambini!). There’s even an operatic climax straight out of CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA. Effective? Si. Neo-realistic? Non così tanto.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *The ironic distancing and dark comic tone that fed commedia all'italiana not yet possible, not before the economic miracle later in the decade, nicknamed ‘Il Boom.’
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