Word: films
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Miracle of Marcelino is a pleasant and well-made little film, but will prove completely acceptable only to those filled with Christmas or other spirits, and to the exceedingly devout...
Nevertheless the incredible elements in the film are at least partly redeemed by a number of touches that have the ring of reality and pathos--Marcelino, the orphan, brilliantly played by Pablito Calvo stealing bread from the kitchen, or playing with an imaginary friend, or the monks' touching ineptness with the baby. Juan Calvo as Brother "Cooky" does a beautifully perceptive job of acting, depicting the conflict between his vocation as a monk and his fatherly love of the boy. The worst and most untenable scenes are those of the actual miracle and of Marcelino's absurdly saccharine inquiries about...
...sound has been dubbed in and subtitles abandoned, which in this case does not prove to be a very happy means of transcending the language barrier. The actors mouth one thing and the sound track disconcertingly says another. As well, much of the flavor and local color of the film is lost by translation. The voice dubbed in for Marcelino is obviously that of an adult. The music is however delightful and appropriate...
...film was made by a Spanish company in Spain, and viewed in its national context, it is hard to see how it could be other than over-pious, almost sanctimonious to American taste. Viewed with these conditions in mind--and taken with a block of salt--it is a very competent and sensitive film...
Some of the woeful inadequacies of life when compared to fiction are made very funny, but the film is not the neat satirical gem that it could be, and for a sad reason. The two sequences of events, both acted out for use with mild ingenuity by the same cast in the same setting, are too similar. Although an amusing technical touch is added by filming the reality in black and white and the fiction in technicolor, the scriptwriters' reality is often too close to the novelist's fiction, and both are often obvious...