The Roof

Newly married in Rome, Natale and Luisa have to live in the crowded house of the groom's family. After a fight they end up on the street. There is one way out: under a rule in force at the time, a shack that has its roof on cannot be demolished. Through a single night, before the police arrive, the couple try to build a room and a roof. Vittorio De Sica directed from a screenplay by Cesare Zavattini, one of the later films of their long partnership. It is counted among the last of neorealism. The method is the same: non-professional actors, real locations and a story built around one small need. In Bicycle Thieves it was a bicycle; here it is a roof. It screened at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian neorealism and films about ordinary people staying afloat. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for dramatic escalation. The film concentrates on the work of a single night and manufactures no big event.