Miracle in Milan

Miracle in Milan might seem like a humorous bit of Communist propaganda, if it were not for all the supernatural. Its characters are takeoffs on a decadent capitalistic population. The rich industrialists are all bleated and jewlish, which the proletariat is grubby but unbowed, dancing around junk heaps with fixed, there fund smiles. As party line literature, it runs close in the line, until the end, when capitalism bows not to strength and indignation but to an unprepossessing miracle maker.

It is probable that everyone who sees Vittorio De Sica's will reach for some symbolic meaning, but I doubt there really is one. Miracle in Milan is a modern fairy tale, no more. The evil tycoons and down trodden mass are simplifications made for the sake of fantasy rather than ideology. Its hero, a poor, virtuous boy, could easily be Jack the Giant Killer or Aladdin with a magic lamp (though in this case it is a dove).

De Sica heightens his fantasy with a cast of unbelievable, but highly amusing characters, a grouchy tramp who longs to possess a silk hat, an effervescent, scatterbrained old woman, who dies and becomes an equally bouncing angel, and a weak-kneed general. To put across such unreal nonsense as Miracle in Milan, all the actors must show no signs of farcical acting. Since they do not, the motion picture is delightful.

With it is a relatively old Guinness film, Last Holiday. It is not as good as his latest movies, but it provides an excellent study of technique evolution. Last Holiday was one of Guinness' first attempts at the "little man turning tables" technique. Not so polished as later productions, it is still extremely funny in parts. As in the recent Guinness comedies, the table slips on the little man in the end, but in Last Holiday it falls much too abruptly.