Chronicle of Poor Lovers

Florence in 1925, the first years of the fascist dictatorship. Young Mario moves to a poor street in the old city to be near his girlfriend Bianca. The street is small and everyone knows everyone: Maciste the blacksmith, the neighbours, the women renting rooms, gossip and debt. There Mario becomes friends with two anti-fascists. As the regime closes in, the street has to take sides. Carlo Lizzani directed the film from Vasco Pratolini's novel, and it is one of the later examples of Italian neorealism. The whole story is squeezed into a single street; politics is told through neighbourly relations rather than through speeches. Marcello Mastroianni is in the cast before he became a star. The film screened at Cannes in 1954 and ran into political pressure in the Italy of the time.