Un ragazzo di Calabria

To write that "un ragazzo di Calabria " is a success story is to diminish the director ,the great Comencini ,the poet of childhood , still unsurpassed in this field in Europa.

It's a long and winding road to the race in Rome ; the boy's father wants his son to study , the only way for him to escape from a poor job like his.The boy runs barefeet ,perhaps not to wear his shoes out .Although clever ,Mimi is despised at school by a teacher whose pedagogy leaves a lot to be desired :reading a pupil's essay to make the class laugh at him is a humiliation hard to bear ;the way she speaks to her schoolboys is pedantic and cold :nothing of dear signore Perboni in the previous "Cuore "; as the learned consul did not understand his son in the poignant " incompreso " , this brute of a father has no clue: whereas he enjoys running faster and faster along his land's road, he forces him to slave away in a workshop.

It's only natural that the boy makes friends with the bus driver (the great Gian Maria Volonté ) ,an outcast ,because he's a commie and a miscreant : he becomes his coach and urges him not to give up on his dream.

In the early sixties,in Europa, many people go to watch TV in their richer neighbors ' houses ; in a remote region such as Calabria :it was a window on the outside world . Women's position in this rural society was very subsidiary : the husband was the indisputed head of the family and if the mom can intervene ,it's through the agency of a wealthy uncle.On the stadiums , girls do not seem to be entitled to practise sport ,just to give the runners the starting signal (the race's godmother) or to cheer up.

From "la finestra sul luna park " to his remake of "Marcellino" , nobody depicted a child's soul, despair or joie de vivre as Comencini.

A BOY FROM CALABRIA is a nice story set in one of the most beautiful regions of Italy's south. It is the story of 13-year-old Mimi' (well-played by Santo Polimeno), who achieves earthly ecstasy whenever he is running...and always in bare feet, like his hero, the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila, who won the Olympic marathon in 1960, when this story is set. Mimi's own ambition is to participate in the youth race in Rome, despite the firm opposition of his gruff and slightly insane father who thinks running at all is a time-waster and beats his son to prove the point. Director Luigi Comencini has a tradition of making fine films about children, such as PROIBITO RUBARE and LA FINESTRA SUL LUNA PARK. Gian Maria Volonte', the great Italian actor seen in CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI, plays the boy's bus-driver/mentor Felice. The film is not perfect. It lags here and there and should develop more momentum than it does toward the end. But it is a fine film to show young people studying Italian or Italian culture.