To write that "un ragazzo di Calabria " is a success story is to diminish the director ,the great Comencini ,the poet of childhood , still unsurpassed in this field in Europa.
It's a long and winding road to the race in Rome ; the boy's father wants his son to study , the only way for him to escape from a poor job like his.The boy runs barefeet ,perhaps not to wear his shoes out .Although clever ,Mimi is despised at school by a teacher whose pedagogy leaves a lot to be desired :reading a pupil's essay to make the class laugh at him is a humiliation hard to bear ;the way she speaks to her schoolboys is pedantic and cold :nothing of dear signore Perboni in the previous "Cuore "; as the learned consul did not understand his son in the poignant " incompreso " , this brute of a father has no clue: whereas he enjoys running faster and faster along his land's road, he forces him to slave away in a workshop.
It's only natural that the boy makes friends with the bus driver (the great Gian Maria Volonté ) ,an outcast ,because he's a commie and a miscreant : he becomes his coach and urges him not to give up on his dream.
In the early sixties,in Europa, many people go to watch TV in their richer neighbors ' houses ; in a remote region such as Calabria :it was a window on the
outside world . Women's position in this rural society was very subsidiary : the husband was the indisputed head of the family and if the mom can intervene ,it's through the agency of a wealthy uncle.On the stadiums , girls do not seem to be entitled to practise sport ,just to give the runners the starting signal (the race's godmother) or to cheer up.
From "la finestra sul luna park " to his remake of "Marcellino" , nobody depicted a child's soul, despair or joie de vivre as Comencini.
