Bread, Love and Dreams

A new commander of the carabinieri is posted to a poor mountain town. Carotenuto is middle aged, unmarried, and thinking about marriage from the moment he arrives. His eye falls on the town's most striking young woman: a girl known as the Bersagliera, angry, poor and unable to hold her tongue. She is interested in his subordinate, and the young man is too shy to say anything. The town watches everyone. Luigi Comencini directs. Vittorio De Sica plays Carotenuto and Gina Lollobrigida plays the Bersagliera. It was an extraordinary commercial success in Italy and sequels followed. It counts as one of the starting points of the strand in Italian cinema called pink realism: the places and the poverty of postwar neorealism remain, but the tone has been turned to comedy and the outcomes are happy. That change was argued over by the critics of the period. Gina Lollobrigida became an international star with the part. Vittorio De Sica is here as an actor rather than a director, from the period in which he was known to act in order to finance his own films. Life in the town is given in detail: the gossip, the church, the poverty and everyone knowing everyone. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Italian comedy and European cinema of the fifties. Who it is not for: the narrative is simple, the woman is built through the gaze of the period, and the poverty is sweetened.