L'Amore

A Rossellini film in two parts. What they have in common is a single performer: Anna Magnani is in both. The first part is a telephone call. A woman is alone in a room, talking on the phone to the man who has left her, and the whole part consists of that call. She is lying. She says she is well, that she has slept, that she has been out, and we never hear what is said at the other end. The source is a play by Jean Cocteau. The one-person text is carried across to film as it stands. The second part takes place in a mountain village. Nanni herds goats, has nobody, and has lost some of her mind. A bearded stranger arrives. She takes him for Saint Joseph; the man does not speak, he gives her wine, and she becomes pregnant. The village finds out. Nanni says the child is holy, and the town mocks her, stones her, drives her away. What the narrative is interested in is not the miracle but exclusion: the film never asks whether the woman is right; what it describes is her being left alone for believing. The man playing the stranger is Federico Fellini. He also worked with Rossellini on the writing of that part; he was not yet a director then. What happened to the film is larger than the film. The Miracle opened in New York in 1950, was accused of blasphemy, and the city revoked its licence. The distributor went to court. In 1952 the United States Supreme Court found in his favour and overturned the view the court had held since 1915: cinema now fell within freedom of expression. The decline of film censorship in America began with that ruling. Anna Magnani and Federico Fellini are in the cast. Roberto Rossellini directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes Italian neorealism and cinema that leans on a single performer. Who it is not for: anyone expecting one whole story; the two parts are joined only by the actor.