CHILDREN ARE WATCHING US - DVD review

"The Children Are Watching Us" (1944) sounds like a great title for a horror film. Pricò, the five-year old protagonist of the film (played by Luciano de Ambrosis), has the same piercing eyes and creepy complacency that Bill Mumy brought to the infamous "Twilight Zone" episode "It's a Good Life." But little Pricò doesn't have the power to wish the mean old adults into the cornfield; instead, he can only stand by helplessly while their sordid melodramas wreck his childhood. Pricò can only stand by and watch, but he both sees and understands a whole lot more than the adults give him credit for.

Pricò would seem to be better off than most children in war-time Italy (the film was shot in 1942, just before the war turned sour for most Italians). His parents are wealthy enough to maintain a nice apartment and still take holidays at an upscale beach resort. With no brothers or sisters, Pricò is all set to be the spoiled-rotten center of love and affection from both dad and mom. Unfortunately, Pricò has another rival for his mother's love, a handsome gigolo named Roberto (Adriano Rimoldi).

His mother Nina (Isa Pola) runs off with Roberto early in the film, but soon comes home because she can't bear to be apart from her son. Andrea (Emilio Cigoli) takes her back but remains wary, and with good reason. Nina is in heat and now that Roberto has caught the scent, he isn't going to stay away. He even stalks her while she's on vacation, leading to one of the most shocking moments in the film. Nina, unable to control her passions, leaves Pricò to fend for himself for a few days while she runs off her with her Latin lover. Pricò wanders off and almost gets hit by a train, a harrowing experience that is only the first of many devastating repercussions Nina's betrayal has on the family.

"The Children Are Watching Us" was Vittorio De Sica's fifth film as director (he had previously been one of Italy's premiere leading men), but marked his first full-fledged collaboration with screenwriter Cesare Zavattini. The two men would go on to form one of the most famous director-screenwriter partnerships in cinema history, helping to create Italian neo-realism with landmark films such as "Bicycle Thieves" (1948) and "Umberto D." (1952). "The Children Are Watching Us" is usually described as a protoneorealist film, but this label reflects the wisdom of hindsight. The film is more properly considered a melodrama, much more similar to standard studio fare of the era (both Hollywood and Italian) than to De Sica's later films. Still, there's no doubt the film has a more realistic edge to it than many studio films and is unusually frank in its depiction of the problems in modern Italian society, the sort of issues that were generally ignored in favor of fascist-endorsed Romanticism.

De Sica pulls no punches in his depiction of Nina: she betrays her son and her husband for purely selfish reasons, and many of the elites in her social circle all but openly encourage adultery. Most viewers will hate Nina for this, but the film restrains judgment. Instead, De Sica filters all the events of the film through Pricò's eyes, sometimes with startling effect. When Pricò returns from vacation without mommy, he excitedly recounts the story of his fun time at the beach to his father who quickly figures out why Nina is nowhere to be seen. Yet Andre doesn't take action; he is strangely passive even though his patriarchal society would surely condone (or even demand) that the cuckold take vengeance. But then again Andrea isn't the protagonist. Because Pricò is the one most effected by events in the film, he is the only who gets to pass final judgment. And judge he does in the film's final scene which delivers the kind of emotional roundhouse rivaled only by the great melodramas like "Stella Dallas" (1937).

Like much of De Sica's work (and virtually all Italian cinema this side of Antonioni), "The Children Are Watching Us" is marked by moments of extreme sentimentality, but if you view this as a melodrama rather than a "protoneorealist" film, the mawkishness is simply an expected element of the genre. The mix of sentimentality and the innocence of youth can often provide a sickly-sweet sugar shock, but Pricò is never played for the "poor widdle me" factor (not even when he cries), and his passive but constant vigilance renders him an unusually effective window character for the audience.

Video

The film is presented in its original 1.33:1 full-screen aspect ratio. The black-and-white photography is remarkably bright and sharp, but there is still some debris visible from the source material and a few ugly looking splices here and there. However, this digitally restored transfer is still top-notch as we have all come to expect from Criterion.

Audio

The DVD is presented in Dolby Digital Mono. Optional English subtitles support the Italian audio.

Extras

The disc is light on extras by Criterion's usual standards. Two short interviews are included: a 2004 interview with Luciano de Ambrosis (8 min.), now in his sixties, who remembers what he can of his time on the film, and a 2004 interview with film critic Callisto Cosulich (9 min.) who mainly discusses the relationship between De Sica and Zavattini.

The insert booklet contains excellent essays by film critics Peter Brunette and Stuart Klawans. Many companies have discontinued the inclusion of inserts with DVDs which is a great idea for most flimsy offerings, but Criterion's inserts continue to be a worthwhile source of added value, and the graphics are attractive as well.

Closing Thoughts

"The Children Are Watching Us" may not be a horror film, but Pricò is forced to face a child's greatest nightmare: the break-up of his family. None of the privileges of wealth can make for the loss of stability and trust in his life, and most horrifying of all, he is forced to confront the grim realities of life many years before he should have to. Pricò isn't just watching, he also understands what he's seeing and that's the real tragedy of the film.