User reviews

Senza Famglia is the first Italian screen version of a popular late 19th century French novel that was filmed several times earlier by the French themselves and would go on to be adapted a number of times more including as a Japanese animation. The episodic story of a poor little boy tossed about between different households, showing a Dickens influence ,has an emotional appeal somewhere between the convincing realism of a good novel and the manufactured entimentality of a 1930s Shirley Temple vehicle. In this case it is a chance to see Luciano De Ambrosis, the talented child actor De Sica had used a few years before in his The Children Are Watching Us, in another role, he is a natural. The production based in a Venice studio is decidedly low budget sometimes crude and features names mostly unfamiliar to me (at least) compared to the actors and crew I recognize from other contemporary Italian films. The 75 minute running time leads to a number of details that were included in other filmizations of the book being left out.