ItalianGerry

This marvelous film about a group of children in the town of Berat, Albania was virtually unknown outside of its country of original until fairly recently. Its appearance on TCM should make it familiar to many more. From the end of World War II until the 1990s Albania was a closed society, one of the most restrictive Communist nations on the planet, rivaling that of North Korea. (I recommend seeing Gianni Amelio's 1996 film "Lamerica" which dealt with the nation's collapse and the outflow of refugees resulting from its turmoil.) The children here have an ongoing feud with the occupying German soldiers who have taken over their playground. They develop some patriotic consciousness and assist the local partisans in combatting the intruders, in a way we also saw in Rossellini's classic "Open City." The boys (and the occasional young girl) are all fine troupers as is their mascot dog Tuli and a little goat, and the adults as well. The woman director Xhanfize Keko was remarkably skilled in eliciting natural performances from the young cast and apparently made a number of other films with a youthful roster. The opening shot with the group of kids cheerfully walking together, and accompanied by lilting background music, sets the tone for this very nice movie.

I've had the opportunity to watch this film in both its Italian version and English-dubbed release version. There are some great women in the cast, including Linda Darnell, Valentina Cortese, Lea Padovani, and Giulietta Masina before she appeared with Quinn in "La Strada." This obscure little rarity is a noirish character study about three dispossessed prostitutes evicted from a bordello and about a sucker (Anthony Quinn) who wants to run off to Venezuela with one of them. Giulietta Masina became friendly with Quinn during the filming, introduced him to her husband Federico Fellini, and got him the role of Zampanò in "La Strada." Unlike "La Strada," where Quinn was dubbed in Italian for the home version, here he spoke his own Italian, probably coached by Valentina Cortese and Masina. Although the reviews were not overly kind to this picture, it is worth seeing because of its atmosphere, its extraordinary cast, and its rarity.