Word: matteo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Comrades, for only 27 traitors you will not sell your souls to the Americans," he said. This was hardly an answer to a rugged young peasant named Matteo Pistillo, nicknamed Spaccatutto (worldbeater) and long known for his unswerving devotion to the Communist cause. "All right," he cried, "but when will Palmiro become our Premier? It may be true what the comrade said, but it is still truer that today I see the land reform." Pistillo had heard of other defections from the Communist Party in southern Italy. By last month the reform had given farms to 146 families around...
Last week Matteo Pistillo the world-beater led 431 of his comrades into San Severo's municipal theater, and there, before Christian Democratic Party workers who could not quite believe it, had them pile their Communist Party cards on the table and sign up as members of the Christian Democratic Party. "Friends, there are no more traitors here," announced the worldbeater. "We free men are choosing the way of justice." It was the biggest mass defection from Italy's Communist Party (the best-entrenched in Western Europe) since...
Angelo is most appealing in his simplicity--his innocent tugging at Matteo's pants, his naive washing every five minutes to make himself as light as the other boys. He would not have been so convincing, nor the plot so moving, if the acting and directing had been anything less then magnificent...
Gradually Matteo's attitude towards the mulatto changes. When he sees the other boys picking on Angelo, he finds himself asking some embarrassing questions. He wonders why this mulatto, who cries like any other white child, is not their equal. Matteo is humbled by Angelo's simple faith in God and in the goodness of man. His initial repulsion becomes pity and--almost--love...
...theme of this type can easily become too moralizing and too artificial, but in this Italian film it doesn't. Don Genna--a friend of Matteo who regards life as one enormous joke--and other humorous relief keep the picture from being just another sermon...