Les ramoneurs de la vallée d'Aoste

Count Giovanni Cimara takes a break from duck hunting to fall in love with peasant Laura Darville. She gives birth to a son. Cimara is happy to marry her, but his father will have none of it. He sends his son away on business, and has Signorina Darville, her father and child turned out. Eight years later they are starving, so the boy is sent to be a chimney sweep with his friend. One day he is ordered to clean some chimneys. He is too weak, so his friend goes in his place, and is killed. But Signorina Darville thinks it is her son who has died and goes mad.

It's a great tragic story about the oppression of the poor. Unfortunately it is given a happy ending. Perhaps it is from the original novel by Giovanni Sabatini, or perhaps it was seen as a necessity by the movie makers. Whichever it is, it misses the chance to be a precursor of the neo-realism movement.