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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The Sweetness and Genius of Giulietta Masina

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