#Mario Bonotti

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The Gates of Heaven (La porta del cielo), Vittorio De Sica (1945)

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Luciano De Ambrosis and Emilio Cigoli in The Children Are Watching Us (Vittorio De Sica, 1944) Cast: Emilio Cigoli, Luciano De Ambrosis, Isa Pola, Adriano Rimoldi, Giovanna Cigoli, Jone Frigerio, Dina Perbellini. Screenplay: Cesare Giulio Viola, Margherita Maglione, Cesare Zavattini, Adolfo Franci, Gherardo Gherardi, Vittorio De Sica, based on a novel by Cesare Giulio Viola. Cinematography: Giuseppe Caracciolo, Romolo Garroni. Production design: Amleto Bonetti. Film editing: Mario Bonotti. Music: Renzo Rossellini. The title, The Children Are Watching Us, carries a warning that threatens to turn Vittorio De Sica's film into a moral fable. Which would probably have been okay with the Fascist and Catholic censors watching over De Sica's shoulder, since it ostensibly serves the cause of God and family, meting out punishment to the careless parents who let young Pricò (Luciano De Ambrosis) suffer from the failure of their marriage. The mother here bears the chief burden of scorn for letting her carnal desires lead her away from the path of duty, though the father also gets blamed for letting his workaholic tendencies distract him from his role as husband and father. But of course a director as sophisticated as De Sica can't allow himself to be so morally didactic, especially since he's working here with, among a raft of writers, Cesare Zavattini, who became his greatest collaborator on the classics to come: Shoeshine (1946), Bicycle Thieves (1948), and Umberto D. (1952). The Children Are Watching Us is an unabashed tearjerker, with an often heartbreaking performance by young De Ambrosis, but there is a substance to the film, a clear-eyed look at the characters and the milieu in which they exist, that transcends its implicit sermonizing and anticipates the neorealistic postwar works.