After his earth shattering Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio De Sica and long time screenwriter Cesare Zavattini turned their neo-realist ideas to something much more like a fable yet retaining the core ideas behind the revolutionary cinema movement. Miracle in Milan went on to wow critics and audiences, winning the Grand Prize of the Cannes Film Festival in 1951.

Always in the shadow of the ever more popular Bicycle Thieves, this largely unsung masterpiece tends toward magic realism to imagine a place where society’s most downtrodden can find purchase and possible escape from misery. Set within a fantastically theatrical shantytown, Miracle in Milan constructs an alternate world from De Sica and Zavattini’s fascination with marginalised perspectives. The unusual use of deliberate artifice and spectacle rekindles the Meliesian magical aura of early cinema.

Arrow Academy is pleased to present De Sica’s classic along with his 1956 neo-realist film Il Tetto, also written by Zavattini, in this special edition.