Just ran this in 35mm.....and found it to be a lot more enjoyable than the dreary and misery-ridden BICYCLE THIEF (with a very unlikeable, desperate lead character) by the same director. The two leads (the newly married couple) were naturalistic and very likable, and you really could identify with their plight - which became no less desperate than that of the BICYCLE THIEF. Their brief moments of love and affection for each other were very moving - and believably touching when alongside scenes of their unhappiness and desperation. Their desperate race to build a squalid little structure to live in is incredibly involving and pulls you in to the very last moments of the picture. Will they make it? You'll have to see the picture to find out.

After a pause of some years (after 'Umberto D') Vittorio de Sica and Cesare Zavattini returned to neorealism and made this very down-to-earth and extremely realistic almost documentary film of the hardships of poor people to obtain a decent place to live of their own. The film begins with the young couple's marriage, then they move in with the family but there are constant quarrels, so they have to find a place of their own. He is a bricklayer, so he knows how to build houses, and he gathers his friends to build a small house when his wife is pregnant. It is against the law, but if a house has a roof it cannot be torn down by the authorities as illegal. There is a race to get the small house completed before the guards arrive. The main character of the film is tenderness, augmented by the endearing music of Alessandro Cicognini, the ordeals of the young couple in their early twenties are being depicted with empathic sincerity, and this should certainly be included in de Sica's canon of Neo-realistic masterpieces. The mood is very closely related with 'Miracle in Milan', like a more realistic sequel to that fairy tale. The human touch is unmistakable and poignantly realistic, so as to make you feel that all this is happening for real. That's his knack as a master director of many masterpieces, of which this is just another one.