The Railroad Man

Reminiscent of Bicycle Thieves in its neorealist look at a troubled working class father through the eyes of his young son, this film is a station on Pietro Germi’s way to his late, broadly satiric style. He plays the railroad engineer patriarch himself, as his life falls apart from one Christmas to the next, driving his older son and daughter away from home, losing his job through bad luck and excessive homage to the grape, and testing the resolve of his saintly wife. The younger son takes in all this family drama from his partly comprehending perspective, moving through sorrow to a fragile redemption. In the end it might have seemed sentimental or melodramatic, if not for the honest naturalism of character and detail. This is a good but nonessential specimen of later Italian neorealism, flavored by the influence of John Ford; I can’t find fault but I can’t get excited about it either. It does, however, make me glad that my own father made the conscious effort to move beyond the traditional boozy, autocratic style of our Italian forefathers. (1956, dvd, n.) *6+*