323 The Children Are Watching Us

[Matt]

The Children Are Watching Us

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/1073/323_box_348x490_w128.jpg[/img]

In his first collaboration with renowned screenwriter and longtime partner Cesare Zavattini, Vittoria De Sica examines the cataclysmic consequences of adult folly on an innocent child. Heralding the pair's subsequent work on some of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism, The Children Are Watching Us is a vivid, deeply humane portrait of a family's disintegration.

Special Features

-New, restored high-definition digital transfer
-New video interviews with star Luciano De Ambrosis and Vittorio De Sica scholar Callisto Cosulich
-New and improved subtitle translation
-A 24-page booklet featuring film scholar Peter Brunette, and critic Stuart Klawans on screenwriter Cesare Zavattini

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[Matt]

Lots of interest in this title, apparently. Anyway, here is Vincent Canby's original review from the New York Times:

IN 1942, four years before he made ''Shoeshine,'' his first neo-realist success, Vittorio De Sica directed ''The Children Are Watching Us'' (''I Bambini Ci Guardano''), based on a novel by Cesare Giulio Viola, who was also to contribute to ''Shoeshine.''

''The Children Are Watching Us'' now looks very tame and conventional. However, considering the circumstances under which it was produced and the work it preceded (including ''The Bicycle Thief'' and ''Miracle in Milan''), ''The Children Are Watching Us'' is an important footnote to the De Sica career. The film opens today at the Thalia SoHo Theater on a bill with De Sica's not-great ''Brief Vacation'' (1973).

The most interesting thing about ''The Children Are Watching Us'' is that it seems to be a sincerely serious film that was purposely disguised to look as rootless and classless as a soap opera. Though Italy was at war when it was made, there are no references to attach the film to its own period. It appears to take place in some idealized bourgeois society, where, because there are jobs for everyone and food for all, the citizens (including the film makers) have nothing to do but fret about personal problems.

In ''Children,'' these problems are both real and devastating as experienced by its solemn adolescent hero, Prico, but they're unconnected to anything that's happening in the world at large. Prico's pretty, bored, middle-class mother abandons him on two different occasions to run off with the same man. The boy comes to put all his trust in his decent but unexciting father, only to be abandoned in turn by him.

The story is told almost entirely from the point of view of the boy, who makes no judgments on what he sees. This might be expected to make the film more complex than one in which the social-political system takes all the blame. In fact, however, it puts more of a burden on De Sica, the actors and the screenplay than they can carry. Fate all by itself, without help from any particular system, has stacked the cards against poor little Prico.

As played by Luciano De Ambrosis, a nonprofessional actor, Prico is not an immensely appealing child. De Sica was never at his best in his direction of children - they tend to come out looking a bit phony, even when they are amateurs. They appear to have been designed to conform to a contemporary ideal. In this film, Prico, whose hair is always combed, could well be the child on a box of breakfast cereal.

This makes the bleak heart of ''The Children Are Watching Us'' all the more astonishing. Here's a very dark movie that initially looks no more disturbing than a tear-jerker like ''The Champ,'' but that was to lead directly to De Sica's greatest, angriest films - ''Shoeshine'' and ''The Bicycle Thief.''

[tavernier]

According to a Criterion press release, this has been postponed: The Children Are Watching Us moves from January to March, and Viridiana moves from February to a date to be decided.

[htdm]

I'm really looking forward to this title (whenever it gets released). Any idea why Criterion lists the year of production as 1944? At first, I thought perhaps they might have wanted to avoid associating the film with the Fascists, but I kind of doubt that -- and they had no problem with releasing Clouzot 's Le Corbeau.

[What A Disgrace]

Booklet specifics revealed with the site's return.


- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- New video interviews with star Luciano De Ambrosis and Vittorio De Sica scholar Callisto Cosulich
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- A 24-page booklet featuring film scholar Peter Brunette, and critic Stuart Klawans on screenwriter Cesare Zavattini

[What A Disgrace]

A review is up at the Beaver.

...oddly enough, a rented copy just shipped to me from Blockbuster, a full ten days before release.

[montgomery]

Watched this last night. Near flawless direction saves the film from being too mawkish. I sort of dreaded watching it, because there seems to be a tradition in Italian cinema of using kids to ellicit sympathy and other cheap emotions. DeSica himself goes overboard with this a lot, although he's even worse with the use of the dog in Umberto D. Anyway, the film is basically a soap opera in a fantasy world in which the war doesn't exist. I disagree with Canby's review; the child actor is effective and usually pretty subtle, as far as Italian movie-kids go.
Spoilers:
What I really liked about this film was how DeSica refrains from judging the characters except through the child's eyes. Although the mother does pretty terrible things throughout the movie and is clearly not a good mother, she's not portrayed as evil, and as long as the child forgives her, we forgive her too. So when he turns his back on her at the end of the film, we finally turn our back on her too, and it's an amazingly effective moment. I also like how all the adults are portrayed as lost and vulnerable, and the child has to lie to his father so as not to hurt his feelings. It's not an original idea, but it's effective in the film.

[kinjitsu]

I sort of dreaded watching it, because there seems to be a tradition in Italian cinema of using kids to ellicit sympathy and other cheap emotions.

That seems universal and hardly exclusive of Italians.

Btw, thanks to Matt, the spoiler tags are working again.

Spoiler

Btw, thanks to Matt, the spoiler tags are working again.

[montgomery]

It's certainly universal, but in my film-going experiences, it seems most prevelant in Italian films...though I certainly admit that this may be a generalization.

[kinjitsu]

It's certainly universal, but in my film-going experiences, it seems most prevelant in Italian films...though I certainly admit that this may be a generalization.

Then fair is fair.

[Gigi M.]

I sort of dreaded watching it, because there seems to be a tradition in Italian cinema of using kids to ellicit sympathy and other cheap emotions.

That seems universal and hardly exclusive of Italians.

You're absolutely right Kinjitsu.

I also think that Montgomery's comments regarding De Sica's use the dog in Umberto D are unfair. I'm my opinion Flike is not only a symbol of true friendship, but also the climax of the entire film.

[Scharphedin2]

I am struggling a little with this film, and would be interested in reading some more views on it. The absence of even the slightest reference to the war in such an otherwise realistic portrayal of Italian life in the early forties is difficult to swallow, but then maybe my experience of the film is tainted by literally having fought through the war with Hollywood for the past six weeks. It seems that not a single American film failed to somehow allude to the war in some way during the early forties.

Maybe, since De Sica is telling the story through the eyes of the boy, the ommision of the war is natural in face of the much greater and more immediate apocalypse that the boy is facing with his family breaking up.

This is clearly an early effort by De Sica, but there is still much to admire in the way that he depicts the details of childhood, and, even though I was getting a little impatient with his insistence on all Italian women being complicitous, slanderous and/or adulterous, the portrait of the mother is still not without sympathy and objectivity.

The ending is probably where the film really sinks into the sand. We do see the father coming up with some very pragmatic solutions to daily life's little problems in the beginning of the film. Yet, the way he finally resolves the crisis of his marriage is maybe a little too pragmatic. Of course, I should not be surprised to learn that it is based on a real life story, but as drama I find it thick.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this film? Actually one that I had greatly anticipated seeing for a long time.

[Saarijas]

Maybe, since De Sica is telling the story through the eyes of the boy, the ommision of the war is natural in face of the much greater and more immediate apocalypse that the boy is facing with his family breaking up.

.

That is exactly how I saw it. The film is told through the perspective of the child. When I was 6 or so I had no idea what was going on, the Gulf War, what hte hells that? I didn't even ask what it was, just simply something adults talked about. Although its been many months, hell probably a year, since I have seen the film, I think this theroy is re-enforced by the way other details are ommited from the story. No specific examples are comming to mind, but I remember questoning that also, the idealistic life everyone is living, but that was the conclusion I came to once I thought about it also.

[Cash Flagg]

According to Michael's Movie Mayhem, this has been discontinued.

[manicsounds]

According to Michael's Movie Mayhem, this has been discontinued.

...which now interest is revived.

[ellipsis7]

What a fantastic film, pick it up while it's still available somewhere (still there currently for sale on CC site) as it seems to be getting difficult to obtain/OOP...

[TMDaines]

The Italian disc is good too and comes with an extra documentary (which is the same one that is also present on Criterion's Bicycle Thieves DVD and Arrow's Blu-ray, I believe), although it has no English subs.

[Tom Hagen]

Undoubtedly the DVD to own if, you know, you live in Italy.

[TMDaines]

Undoubtedly the DVD to own if, you know, you live in Italy.

Because everyone on this forum is an American, who never imports DVDs and who only speaks one language .

[knives]

Do you produce diamonds?

By the way I also encourage people to get this. After Two Women this is probably my favorite of his directorial efforts.

[domino harvey]

This is a forum devoted to an American DVD label

[TMDaines]

This is a forum devoted to an American DVD label

I'm getting so tired of the likes of you and a few others around here who try to jump on or mock anyone who says anything if they aren't one of the little inner circle.

Jesus Christ, I won't mention any foreign DVDs anymore and eveything other than the three Criterion-based subforums can be deleted then in that case. Apologies for suggesting there's a world of film outside of those released with a C stuck on the front case. I didn't realise that I had stumbled across Criterion's Facebook page.

[Gregory]

I didn't realise that I had stumbled across Criterion's Facebook page.

You misspelled "realize"

(sorry, couldn't resist)

[Tom Hagen]

I'm not against a discussion of foreign DVDs in general. Personally, I'm not crazy about dealing with the current Blu-ray era hassle associated with purchasing non-R1 discs -- to say nothing of the annoyance of dealing with overseas transactions ("uh, yes bank, thanks for calling, yes that was actually me making a purchase from the UK, no fraud going on here"). I own a handful of non-R1 discs myself, I don’t necessarily accept that the R1 or Criterion disc of a given title is definitive, I can understand people being interested in multi region DVD collection, comparison, etc. Moreover, I get that we have plenty of non-R1 folks who post around here, and I am all for ecumenicalism in discussion.

What I do find annoying are the following two types of exchanges:

1) Forum member #1: "Look, Criterion announced _____ title on Blu for ______ month. It's never even been released before in America! How exciting!" Forum member #2: "Blah, there's already a perfectly acceptable PAL DVD from another region. It went out of print, but there are plenty of used copies floating around Europe. I'm not upgrading." Forum member #1: "Uh, okay . . . " [Optional] Forum member #2: "This title is a waste of Criterion's time."

2) Forum member #1: "Hey, look, a Criterion title is going out of print. You guys might want to get on this before it gets really expensive to find." Forum member #2: "Although you are talking about a specific Criterion title that people are possibly considering purchasing for collection reasons as much as anything else, let me tell you about other available editions of that title that exist in other regions. As a bonus feature, these other editions may not have English subs, possibly making this product even less relevant for your purchasing needs." Forum member #1: "Uh okay, I thought this was a forum about the Criterion collection." [Optional] Forum member #2: "You Americans just don't care enough about the outside world."

[matrixschmatrix]

Honestly, I think in this context that saying "if you want an alternative to the Criterion, there's this" is fairly valuable, even if the alternative is imperfect for other reasons.

I'm not really sure of why that exchange produced so much venom, it seems like it should have been harmless.