THE STOLEN CHILDREN Movie Review

Il Ladro di Bambini

Every so often a picture just seems to loom up out of nowhere and—totally and unexpectedly—overwhelms you. In 1992, that film, for me at least, was Gianni Amelio's The Stolen Children (Il Ladro di Bambini), the saga of a shy and sensitive carabiniere (Enrico Lo Verso) and the two children he's been assigned to escort from Milan to a Sicilian orphanage. The children—an emotionally battered 11-year old girl who was forced into prostitution by her now-imprisoned mother, and the girl's 9-year-old brother—become more attached to the gentle carabiniere each day, and more confused about the nightmare of their past. Amelio's delicate, graceful handling of this heartbreaking material seems a direct descendent of the great neo-realist classics such as de Sica's The Bicycle Thief, but with a haunting and ethereal quality all its own. The same issues of guilt, innocence, and human responsibility are present here as they were in Italy's post-war films, and much of The Stolen Children's staggering power comes from the fact that despite the passage of years, surprisingly little about the human condition has changed for the better. This is a great, unforgettable experience. Grand Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … The Bicycle Thief, Shoeshine, Open Doors

1992 108m/C IT Enrico Lo Verso, Valentina Scalici, Giuseppe Ieracitano, Florence Darel, Marina Golovine, Fabio Alessandrini; D: Gianni Amelio; W: Gianni Amelio, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Ruili; M: Franco Piersanti. Cannes Film Festival ‘92: Grand Jury Prize. VHS NYR