THE STREET HAS MANY DREAMS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 873, 27 April 1956, Page 34

THE STREET HAS MANY DREAMS

(Lux Films) F Four Steps in the Clouds was anything to judge by, Italian film-makers can combine humour and pathos as well

as anyone. The Street Has Many Dreams is not as good as Four Steps, but it has the same flavour-apparently both were written by Piero Tellini. Like Four Steps, in less capable hands all round it might have turned out sentimental and bathetic, and its dénounement might easily have seemed contrived. Writing of another piece by its director, Mario Camerini, a critic "has mentioned his fondness for the end with a note of pardon and sober hope that is never mere sentimentality, and that describes well the end of this one. Nagged into desperation by his wife (Anna Magnani) because he can’t find a job, Paolo (Massimo Girotti) is persuaded by an acquaintance to steal a car. On his way to the country to make a deal with a "fence," his wife and little son (Giorgio Nimmo) intercept them and join the party. Much of the action takes place in the countryside. There’s one of those wonderful farmhouse family gatherings, for a christening, and at first unaware that Paolo is in the shadow of prison, his wife and the boy go on to make a picnic day of it. Besides these idyllic passages, which the score beautifully underlines, there is plenty of excitement; and there’s much humour in the wife’s impetuous, talkative, near disastrous efforts to do the right thing. Miss Magnani is excellent, yet never steals the show, for none of the players is ever less than highly capable. The score is by Nino Rota (who also wrote the haunting music for The Stranger’s Hand), and the photography by Aldo Tonti-two people whose work I praised a fortnight ago. This is a warm, compassionate film; aware of human frailty, it has too much heart to judge harshly.