Francesco Golisano	Toto'
Emma Gramatica	the old Lolotta
Guglielmo Barnabo'	Mobbi
Brunella Bovo	Edwige
Arturo Bragaglia	Alfredo
Flora Cambi	the unhappy fallen in love
Anna Maria Carena	Marta, the proud woman
Erminio Spalla	Gaetano
Paolo Stoppa	Rappi
Alba Arnova	the statue
Riccardo Bertazzolo	the athlete
Angelo Prioli	the commander in first
Francesco Rissone	the commander in second
Virgilio Riento	sergeant of the watches
Gianni Branduani
Jubel Schembri
Walter Scherer
Jerome Johnson
Egisto Olivieri
Giuseppe Spalla
Giuseppe Berardi
Renato Navarrini
Furlanetto
Piero Salonne
Luigi Ponzoni

One day, a kind old woman, Mrs Lolotta, finds under a cabbage a beautiful child, picks him up with herself and makes him the mother. When Lolotta dies, the child, Totò, is sheltered in an orphanage. Stripling, he goes out from there and the fate puts him in touch with a group of poor men, camped in an abandoned zone of Milan’s outskirsts. With his deep goodness Totò conquers the general likings, practicing a beneficent influence on his new friends. One day a petrol throw goes out from the ground occupied by the poor men illegally: when the rich industrial men Mobbi knows that, he acquires the ground and , to chase its occupants, he gets the intervention of the public strength. Invoked by Totò, the spirit of Lolotta goes down from the sky and deliveries Totò a white dove. With its help, Totò makes the more amazing miracles: the police officers are rout and the poor men see granted their desires. A little distraction of Totò allows two angels to resume the dove, while Totò and his friends are captured. But Lolotta returns the dove to Totò: freed, Totò and his friends steal toward a more correct world on the brooms of the Cathedral Square’s sweepers.

PRIZES

Gold palm at the Festival of Cannes, Fipresci at Cannes
Silver ribbon for the scenography
Best foreign film for the critique of New York.

CRITIQUE

Zavattini, adapting his novel “Totò il buono”, introduced a surreal and fair vein in Neorealism, by now indecline. The attention to the poor people’s problems and the critique against the power, doesn’t go over a generous but schematic populism; what strikes more today is the theme of the utopia and of the compensation of imagination. It displeased all the Italian critique. (P. Mereghetti “ Dizionario dei film 1998”, translated by Alice Castoldi)

NOTES

They collaborated to the scenography: Cecchi Suso D’Amico, Mario Chiari and Adolfo Franci
Makeup: Ned Mann

Miracolo a Milano is the most De Sica’s film on Zavattini’s idea. Differently from the preceding Sciuscià and Ladri di biciclette, the personality of the writer and scriptwriter emerges forcefully, manifesting in its surreal and fairy vein. In this, that can be considered the film that conducts Neorealism to a transformation, the importance of the metaphor emerges; they applay to the miracle or to the fantasic to talk about reality.
And it is evident the turn that this cinema tide suffers: if previously to look means to respect the facts and and to accept them for what they are, now the observation is deformed under the weight of a magic that doesn’ want to respect the chronicle anymore, but to fold up to its needs. It is wanted to change reality.
Some historical news can help us to understand the climate in which the film was conceived: the evasiveness, its being a negative fable can be justified with the real Italian conditions in 1950. The reactionary reflux caused by the “cold war”, determines a creative defiguration.
It is emblematic that to conduct Neorealism toward new film forms is one of the founder couples of such current: De Sica-Zavattini; the cinematographer reach to resort to the miracle as the last chance. Neoralism, that has always bothered the power, is by now the public enemy number one. It will have confirmation in the angry, even if ridiculous, attach to Miracle in Milan from the political class.