Le toit

After a pause of some years (after 'Umberto D') Vittorio de Sica and Cesare Zavattini returned to neorealism and made this very down-to-earth and extremely realistic almost documentary film of the hardships of poor people to obtain a decent place to live of their own. The film begins with the young couple's marriage, then they move in with the family but there are constant quarrels, so they have to find a place of their own. He is a bricklayer, so he knows how to build houses, and he gathers his friends to build a small house when his wife is pregnant. It is against the law, but if a house has a roof it cannot be torn down by the authorities as illegal. There is a race to get the small house completed before the guards arrive. The main character of the film is tenderness, augmented by the endearing music of Alessandro Cicognini, the ordeals of the young couple in their early twenties are being depicted with empathic sincerity, and this should certainly be included in de Sica's canon of Neo-realistic masterpieces. The mood is very closely related with 'Miracle in Milan', like a more realistic sequel to that fairy tale. The human touch is unmistakable and poignantly realistic, so as to make you feel that all this is happening for real. That's his knack as a master director of many masterpieces, of which this is just another one.