The Story Behind the Film

The Criterion Channel is not only a great resource for streaming classic films but also offers in-depth essays written by cinema scholars. The essays offer analysis of classic films, examining their political and social themes as well as the relationships between iconic directors and their protagonists. Criterion recently released a restored version of Francesco Rosi's 1979 film "Christ Stopped at Eboli" and marked the occasion with a compelling essay by about author Carlo Levi and the film’s political themes. Other interesting essays include “Fellini Satyricon: Not Just Friends,” “L’eclisse: Antonioni and Vitti” and “Seeing Clearly Through Tears: On the Smart Sentiment of Umberto D.” just to name a few.

In one recent essay, "Primary Sources," filmmaker Michael Almereyda sheds light on Federico Fellini's 1948 collaboration with Roberto Rossellini, "The Miracle." Fellini stars in the short along with Anna Magnani. Almereyda writes, "Among his collaborations with Rossellini, the most recognizable precursor of Fellini’s own films is The Miracle (1948), a forty-minute short in which Fellini himself appears as a vagabond—tall, bearded, gloomily handsome—who allows Anna Magnani’s simpleminded goatherd to confuse him with her celebrity crush: Saint Joseph. After enhancing this confusion with wine from his flask, the vagabond impregnates the woman, giving her the miraculous child of the title. Fellini supplied the story, a potentially sardonic premise that Rossellini treats with sincere dramatic intensity. Magnani’s credulous character bears a family resemblance to the wayward bride infatuated with the eponymous, turbaned fumetti idol in The White Sheik (1952; Fellini’s first solo-directed feature) and to the wonder-struck waifs played by Giulietta Masina in La strada and Nights of Cabiria (1957). These disenfranchised women are vulnerable yet fierce, and their subjective reality eventually takes on a transcendent power despite the chaos they’ve been plunged into by duplicitous men."

Watch a clip from "The Miracle"...

Stream the complete film on Amazon..

Visit https://www.criterion.com/current/category/2-essays.

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Ornella Muti: Five decades of Acting and Still Going Strong

Ornella Muti was born Francesca Romana Rivelli in Rome in 1955 to a Neapolitan father and an Estonian mother. She began her career as a model during her teenage years and made her film debut in 1970 with “La Moglie più bella” (The Most Beautiful Wife). Her follow-up role was in the 1971 film, “Sole nella pelle” (Sun on the Skin), in which she played the daughter of wealthy parents who runs off with a hippie they don’t approve of. The film offers a telling journey through Italian society in the seventies, with its political climate, breathtaking seaside, and the styles and cars of that time. Much of the film is set amid the sunny Italian seaside and captures the innocence and beauty of first love. Muti made her American film debut in 1980 with "Flash Gordon." She played the role of Princess Aura. She’s appeared in two other American films, including “Oscar,” directed by John Landis and starring Don Ameche, Chazz Palminteri, and Sylvester Stallone. In 1992, she w...

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A Conversation with Documentary Filmmaker Luigi Di Gianni

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Model/Actress Anna Falchi

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