Cuatro pasos en las nubes

Gino Cervi makes an unforgettable performance as the humdrum salesman on a local business trip who gets mixed up with unexpected circumstances that require his assistance, and as the regular kind-hearted man he is, a family man with two children, he can't say no, and so gets dragged Into constantly more awkward undertakings and role plays. The girl he accidentally meets on a train, that gets belated, so he has to continue by bus, proves unintentionally fatal as he finds that girl on the bus again, who happens to be in a delicate condition without a husband, so she asks him to pose for a momentary husband when she has to confront her family with a stern patriarch for a father. When he meets his daughter with a sudden husband, whom she apparently has wed without his permission, he is not amused. And so the complexities tumble on.

It's a marvellous comedy with very serious undertones, a script typical of Cesare Zavattini, who wrote most of Vittorio de Sica's films, and this is an early instance of classical Italian neo-realism but of the comedian kind. One of the best bus rides in cinema history is contained with a driver who is delirious with pride of having just had a son for his first-born, and that bus ride is the one instance of a musical element in the film - all the rest of the music is by the ever reliable Cicognini, who made the music of most Italian Neo-realistic and Vittorio de Sica's films. The film is a wonder of glorious humanity and rustic joy of life with many unforgettable characters, where the grandfather takes a place of his own. Adriana Benetti is not very happy to begin with, but as the film develops she develops a constantly increasing charm and beauty, and her last smile will remain with you for a long time.

This film of Alessandro Blassetti fully deserves its status as one of the '100 Italian films to be saved'. Its pedigree is impressive. The ubiquitous Zavattini had a hand in the story which has been adapted by Guiseppe Amato with yet another marvellous score by Alessandro Cicognini. Czech Vaclav Vich is behind the camera and production design is by Virgilio Marchi. The gallery of characters is wonderfully observed. Gino Cervi has never been better and there are standout performances by Adriana Benetti as Maria, Aldo Silvani and Giacinto Molteni as father and grandfather. This is quite simply a masterpiece of early Neo-Realism. Unforgettable. A film very much of its time but timeless. It spawned a few remakes the best of which is undoubetdly that of Mario Soldati in the fifties starring Fernandel as the kind-hearted salesman but even that version suffers by comparison. Coincidentally Fernandel and Cervi were to play opposite each other in the Don Camillo series. Three other versions, two from Bollywood and one from Hollywood are worthless.

Paolo Bianchi (Gino Cervi) is a traveling salesman caught in a loveless marriage and the drudgery of a poorly-paid job. He meets young Maria (Adriana Benetti) while traveling for work. Maria is pregnant and unwed (a disaster for a woman in the 1940s) and she is returning home to face the parents. She asks Paolo to pose as her husband. During his time with Maria, Paolo experiences moments of happiness, as he has not enjoyed for a long time (a walk in the clouds). How will it end?

Alessandro Blasetti was at his peak with this film and there is much to admire about it. The story (famed screenwriter Cesare Zavattini contributed to it) is very well written, the cinematography is really beautiful (note the scenes where the moving tree leaves play on the faces of Paolo and Maria) and overall the film is well-paced. Adriana Benetti is radiant as Maria and Gino Cervi gives his usual professional performance.

The film has been remade several times, include English language versions but this one is still the best, easily.

Four Steps in the Clouds is a lovely movie about a hard-working heavily-burdened travelling salesman who lets his sympathy for a distressed woman get him into an awkward situation which is nonetheless somewhat of an epiphany for him. Blasetti as director here has a mastering of suspense that I think other directors could well learn from. I think most would have shot the first half an hour of this movie in five minutes. So the movie is full of rustic charm for the weary city dweller, and full of kind moments, wisdom, and occasional humour, with a positively brilliant scene where a bus trip becomes somewhat of a trumpet-borne pageant.

The propaganda aspects of the movie are well worth looking at, and are seldom mentioned from what I can tell. In all fairness I would point out that I don't take exception with any of the content of the movie, but it should be pointed out that it was almost magnetically aligned with many areas of Mussolini's dogma.

This is one of those movies where it is critical to one's appreciation as to whether you take an intentional point of view of the movie, and see it in the context of Fascism or whether you support the concept of intentional fallacy, and maybe look upon the movie as simply humane and beautiful, ripe with existential lessons. I prefer the latter though acknowledging the former.

Mussolini started four "battles" as part of his main economic policy drive, three of these are easily seen in Four Steps in the Clouds. The Battle for Grain, which was about reducing Italian reliance on foreign food imports, the Battle for Births, which was aimed at increasing the birth rate (one effort in this direction was made by banning contraception), and the Battle for Land, which included the draining of the Pontine Marshes for use as agricultural land.

The Battle for Grain made little sense economically, introducing tariffs on foreign grain and in effect subsidising members of the latifondisti (estate owners) such as Maria's father at the expense of the working classes, who saw increased bread prices as a result; one can see, however, how the idea might inspire a sort of natural nationalistic pride.

The Battle for Births led to some fairly extreme conclusions, for example married men in Italy who had six children became totally exempt from tax. A variety of tax incentives and institutionalised career glass ceilings for childless men hugely promoted male fertility, and therefore the bus driver Antonio has financial, as well as purely paternal cause for celebration when his child is born.

At on point in the movie Luca undertakes to show the "newlyweds" his vineyard, which he proudly announces has been grown on re-utilised land, which refers to the Battle for Land.

In contrast to an Italy one may have seen in Fellini movies, women in this movie are seen as a submissive to men, or errant for not being so. Mussolini in fact promoted hugely retrogressive policies regarding women's rights, including sacking all women of child-bearing age from the railways.