They could never make films like this in Hollywood, not even by the sentimental expert German master Douglas Sirk, as Matarazzo's films usually penetrates deep beyond all superficiality and never use artifice or cheap tricks to force out tears of his audience. He is actually bluntly and almost ruthlessly realistic and straight-forward and never builds up any towering set-ups for releasing an overwhelming epitome. He tells his story straight, and his stories are always deeply human, as complex as human life, and he never shirks at critical moments, whereas in Hollywood and European films there would be some constructed dramaturgy to reach the point. Matarazzo always hits the point directly, ignoring possible shocks. It's a great story, which is entirely told in flashbacks, and not in one sequel, but almost in fragments, one link eventually catching up with another.
In a train accident, two trains actually colliding in a tunnel, a Polish refugee family is lost, while their small daughter, three years old, just before that, has followed Silvana Pampanini to the cafeteria from pure natural affection, and they survive while the Polish parents cannot even be identified. She has lost a baby three years earlier, so she feels this baby as a gift by providence as a possible compensation. The problem is, that she is in the immoral profession, and Italian law forbids such to adopt children. Franco Fabrizi is the pimp and the villain, while Marcello Mastroianni eventually appears as the father of her lost child, and he makes a very sensitive and sympathetic appearance, in contrast to all the other scumbags around her. Renzo Rossellini provides perfect music as usual, nothing could be said against the cinematography either, while the one you will remember here is actually Marcello Mastroianni for his precarious delicacy, still early in his career, very young, but all the more convincing.
