Only one review for this Comencini gem,but fortunately ,one which does the great director justice.
With the exception of a documentary ("Bambini in Citta")
It was the first time Luigi Comencini had tackled childhood (and it would not be the last):"Incompreso" was very moving and unforgettable;"Pinocchio" was very different from Disney's cartoon;later in the eighties he would transfer to the screen,with great talent,De Amicis's "Cuore",then redo "Marcellino pan y vino".Comencini is THE poet of childhood ,whose reputation is at least as great in France as in his native Italy.Here all the movies I mention above plus "lo Scopone Scientifico" and his "Casanova" are considered art house cinema .
And the stand out in this wonderful movie is French !Pierre Trabaud was never given in his native country the parts he deserved:he had to be content with Leo Joannon's religious extravaganzas in which appalling screenplays turned him into a saint.
In "La finestra" ,Trabaud is really a saint;directed by a first-class artist ,his hangdog looks work wonders; in the deeply moving flashback -which comes at the end of the movie, which is very rare - Comencini shows -what we already knew- that Righetto gave it all and kept nothing for himself ;the scenes with Alda and her son show what a true father should be (the clown makes no mistake):an uneducated man,he goes as far as to study again to help his protégé whose school report was bad; when he unbuckles his belt ,we already know that he will not beat him; corporal punishment is unthinkable :Righetto is Comencini 's voice.And Righetto will be mistreated,beaten ,falsely accused of being adulterous .
How could Mario be good at school when his dad is always away? The mother thinks that he needs a father's hard way ;the father thinks that a boarding-school is the solution ; but children from wealthy families ("incompreso", where the father , a consul,leaves his children to a governess, or Eugenio ("Voltati Eugenio ") whose bourgeois parents sent him to his grandparents' care in the country suffer as much as Mario, a boy from the working class.
A working class which is not shown in a flattering light: under the pretext of taking in the brat,they want to get the father's big house .And the pair of lovers are not better.
Only Righetto ,a simple man ,asks for nothing in return ; alone in a word of selfish adults (a subject Comencini would often treat),he shows the straight and narrow.And thanks to him ,the window on Luna Park is wide open and the amusement ride restores faith in humanity.
