Love in the City

An experiment of newsreel, today we will say docufilm, recited according to the stylistic elements that would later become cinema-truth, with a splash of neorealism. All supervised by Cesare Zavattini, with the involvement of directors who will make the history of Italian cinema. Among other episodic films whose typology, born for production reasons, will assert itself in a fluctuating way in the following years. Perhaps the adjective desperate had to be added to the subject love of the title, in fact apart from the amusing episodes filmed by Risi and Blasetti, the latter a little repetitive on Italic guardonism, the rest sheds light on episodes of social sadness following the post-war years, which did not predict a rapid economic development, reaching the maximum of drama in the episode of Maselli, a news item that aroused a lot of emotion, written with four hands with Zavattini. The episode with the most stylistic rigor is the Fellini episode, with shots that anticipate the subsequent masterpieces. The episodes signed by Lizzani, on prostitution not yet regulated by Merlin, and Antonioni, on suicide attempts, are rather colorless. However, an experiment of cinematography, little known, which presupposed a sequel that was never realized.