It's hard to review this because it's so good and so bad at once. As the forerunner of the Bicycle Thief it has all the same realist filming and it's a delight to watch in slow paced and close up the Italy of the 1940's. The music's nice and the various shots are quite arty but not pretentious but then the bad: what kind of a story was THAT? SPOILER ALERT! It's basically about a child whose Mum keeps popping off with her lover. She then keeps popping back and we get the jilted husband looking all serious and mean and hurt. Various scenes of the kid with a crumpled sad face and you begin thinking WTF?!! In the end she buggers off with the lover the father dumps the kid and goes and tops himself!! At that point i just lost it and started laughing in the place you're supposed to cry in it was all so ridiculous and absurd and melodramatic. So all in all a watchable film but there's no realism or even neorealism in this story at all. Unbelievable.
Review of The Children Are Watching Us
