Les hommes, quels mufles!

Nice, small scale romantic comedy, already offering an appealing star couple and many of the features of later Italian Realism.

Dismissed as "Signor Biciclette" by the perfume shop girls, cloth cap mechanic Vittorio borrows the car he's repairing at the garage and collects the appealing Lia Franca for a run, ending at the riverside cafe, where the old couple have put a coin in the proto juke boy, which plays "Love's last Word Is Spoken," for Vittorio and Lia to dance but their idyllic afternoon is disturbed by the boss' wife who has spotted the car and sees this as a lift home, stranding Lia.

Calamities and misunderstanding accumulate, with the leads finally working at a Milanese Industrial Fair. This generates a rather winning ending to this advanced, agreeable, light weight.

The film more than stands comparison with contemporary product (eg. the films of René Clair,) shooting material in real locations, which would have been done in a studio in Hollywood or Paris, and foregrounding working class characters, anticipating the neo realist films. There's even an unemployment sub-plot.

De Sica is billed under Franca, the lead of RESURRECTIO, the first Italian sound film. It's probably his first talkie and he's perfectly relaxed and natural. Designer Medin will accompany him on his career.

In this movie we can find the best of italian movie-makers of 30's (the age of "telefoni bianchi", the "white phones", in relation to comedies in which Wh.-Ph. were often used): Camerini as director, Vittorio De Sica, who worked as actor but years after will be one of the most relevant directors in the world, Bixio & Cherubini who wrote one classic song of italian music "Parlami d'amore Mariù" ("Mary, speak about love to me"). The plot is easy, the scenario is in an old Milan, but... seeing this movie means going back in years in which... love was the most important thing.

Every morning, Lia Franca's father wakes her with "Get up sleepyhead! Time to go to work." Today is different. Along comes Vittorio De Sica on his bicycle, holding onto the bus he takes. Her coworkers at the perfume shop tell her he's not what she should be looking for. So when he comes by driving a big car, she accepts a ride home in his big auto, which turns into an excursion to the Lakes. There he abandons her, because his employers see their chauffeur out with the car which he told them needs repaired, and he has to drive them home, and he gets into an accident on the way back and....

De Sica's first of nine movies for director Mario Camerini is a slight one, a romance of working-class people meant to show off the beauty of the countryside around Milan and the gaudy excitement of the 13th Milan Fair as much as the stars. They give good performances, touchy and uncertain, he thinking she's a gold digger but he wants her anyway, she thinking he's a louse, but wanting him. Will they ever get over their injured self regard and get together?

Well, it's inevitable they will, of course, in the movies, but there are enough obstacles thrown in their way, and bumper cars too!