#323: DE SICA, Vittorio: The Children Are Watching Us (1944)

DE SICA, Vittorio (Italy)

The Children Are Watching Us [1944]

Spine #323
DVD

In his first collaboration with renowned screenwriter and longtime partner Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica examines the cataclysmic consequences of adult folly on an innocent child. Heralding the pair's subsequent work on some of the masterpieces of Italian neorealsim, The Children Are Watching Us is a vivid, deeply humane portrait of a family's disintegration.

84 minutes
Black & White

Monaural

1:33:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2006

Director/Writers

Adapted from the novel Pricò by Cesare Giulio Viola.

Screenplay by Vittorio De Sica, Adolfo Franco, Gherado Gherardi, Margherita Maglione, Viola and Cesare Zavattini.

De Sica was 43 when he directed The Children Are Watching Us.

Other De Sica films in the Collection:

#374: Bicycle Thieves (1948)
#1119: Miracle In Milan (1951)
#201: Umberto D. (1952)
#202: Indiscretion Of An American Wife (1953)

The Film

Protoneorealism. In other words, there is still a sense of melodrama — but at the same time, there are location scenes of real life and real people. This is the father of neorealism, which is mostly noted in films from after the war.

This is a sensational film, made in the summer of 1942 — a relatively peaceful time for Italian citizens (especially the middle-upper class).

De Sica was an actor most of his life. He began directing in the early 40’s and this film marks the beginning of his serious directorial career.

Pricò (an incredible performance by the five-year-old Luciano De Ambrosis) is a sensitive little boy, who is lovingly tended to by his parents, Andrea (Emilio Cigoli — he vaguely resembles Giancarlo Giannini) and Nina (the lovely Isa Pola) and their housekeeper, Agnese (Giovanna Cigoli, Emilio’s mother in real life). Until the family crumbles like a sandcastle enveloped by the waves.

Of the six credited screenwriters, Zavattini seems to be the most important, as he stayed on to collaborate on most of De Sica’s best films in the near future.

The film was scheduled for release in 1943, but because of the chaos of war, was not released until 1944, and then only in southern Italy.

It seems to have been partly lost, but this print was reconstructed and restored in 2000.

A cinematic beauty not to be missed.

Film Rating (0-60):

55

The Extras

The Booklet

Twenty-four page booklet featuring film scholar Peter Brunette, and critic Stuart Klawans on screenwriter Zavattini.

A special observation by Brunette:

“ . . . An entire essay could be written on the way the film uses space emotionally, especially in the final scenes, in the cavernous boarding school. The director creates a tiny but complexly self-reflexive and playful moment when a teenager mischievously inserts himself, unbeknownst to Pricò’s family, into their photograph of familial bliss at the beach. Only later, presumably, will they find that this moment of happiness, like their lives, has been turned into a joke for the amusement of others.”

Klawans essay on Zavattini hits on an important note:

“Those of us who have not lived in a full-blown culture of propaganda might not be able to experience the full impact of Zavattini and De Sica’s break with Fascist pretense, but we can’t judge their films intelligently unless we try ... the film ... stripped away the rhetoric and ‘false morality’ of Fascism by loooking at things through a child’s eyes.”

There it is. The Children Are Watching Us.

Commentary

None

Video interviews

With star De Ambrosis and De Sica scholar Callisto Cosulich.

De Ambrosis — who went on to have a long career dubbing films into Italian — fondly recalls working on the film and how De Sica was like a father to him.

Cosulich goes into a lot of detail about the film’s production and history.

Extras Rating (0-40):

32

55 + 32 =

87

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