Angel in a Taxi

Marietto is an orphan at a large instituion run by nuns. A couple comes to adopt him, but he says the woman scowls, and is not as pretty as his mother, who, he says, is ballerina Vera Tschechowa. He runs away, and eventually goes to the opera house where Signorina Tschechowa is to have her premiere as lead dancer. At first she simply takes care of him as any kind-hearted woman would do. But when she says her dancing is more important than he, Marietto runs away.

Now here is the peculiar thing: Marietto -- and Signorina Tschechowa keep running into Vittorio De Sica. Sometimes he is a traffic cop. Sometimes he drives a taxi. But always, when he appears, Marietto gets a little closer to finding a mother and a father.

I won't go so far as to say that any movie with De Sica in it is worth seeing. In when he could choose his own movies, sometimes a producer might offer him so much money he would find himself unable to say no. I will state that he brightens up any scene he appears in. Given the overwhelming sentimentality of this movie, I would not usually care for it, but director Antonio Leonviola, and his co-writer Mario Monicelli have produced a movie with a simple plot and given their characters lines which reflect that, and it works very well. Particularly when De Sica is around.