MovieChat Forums > Miracolo a Milano (1951) Discussion > The guy wishing to be white

The guy wishing to be white

posted 9 years ago by flaiky
3 replies | jump to latest

I just finished this and loved it, a super charming and enjoyable film. But I was a bit surprised to come here and see no comment about the black character asking Toto to make him white. That's definitely a bit awkward for us watching today, right?

I accept that it's a product of the times, and indeed there's still a fair bit of racism in Italy so I can only imagine how bad it was to be black there in the '50s...so his comment was actually quite upsetting. I wonder if De Sica included it as a political statement - 'look how badly we treat these people, so much that they're wishing to change their identity'? Or is that just me projecting my 21st century attitude on a 64-year-old film, and it was - unfortunately - just a way of enforcing white superiority? Either way, I suspect it was mostly just amusing to audiences at the time.

What was the bit with the woman afterwards appearing "blacked-up"? Is it suggesting that heaven will only do an even trade - if he becomes white someone else has to become black? And she looked so sad about it...I thought that moment was really odd, in the context of the film.

EDIT: I decided to search Google books and see what theories there are about this. Turns out that the black man and the woman are in love, so both wish to change their race and be the same. Well, I completely missed that! When did it show them in love? It must have been brief...Did others pick up on it? I'm relieved that there was no racist intent, anyway (although I maintain that contemporary audiences would probably have found it amusing).

That makes a lot of my previous comments void, but I'll leave them here as I'm interested to know if others had a similar reaction to me.

That is a masterpiece of understatement.

[–] MrEraserhead 9 years ago

I thought it was quite clear they were in love, from the moment they arrived at the camp and they were put in separate villages to all the subtle glances the two would give each other to the moment when he asks her if she had won the raffle.
What's interesting - (and i'm just restating one of your points, because I agree with it) is that in '51 when the film came out, the scene might have been almost like a one liner - in the same way 'The Avengers' (2012) is full of one liners which have no bearing on the plot of the film and which nobody references again.

I was waiting for the resolve of their little story but it never came, probably because of the fact it was meant as a silly joke.
When you say however

"I'm relieved that there was no racist intent"

I have to disagree because at the end of the day the two characters still didn't end up together. The problem was they were always of different races and in '51 no-one was going to suggest that the races mix.
If the characters had got together it would have been nice that in the end their differences didn't matter and they loved each other so much they were willing to change themselves to be with one another - it might have even been funny - the fact that they still had the same 'problem' of one being white and one being black and because of that they had to be un happy is just upsetting.

Perhaps it wasn't DeSica's intent to make an out right racist statement because those were the times he lived in and segregation of the races might have been expected, but for someone watching is 2015 the subtext of that little scene speaks fathoms about what a time 1951 was for people. That scene is a little document like Micky Rooney's character in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'(1961) or 'Mammy' in 'Gone with the Wind' (1939).

[–] franzkabuki 8 years ago

Not awkward in the least. Wholly understandable.

"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan

[–] jlam888 (574) 3 years ago

I laughed out loud at that :D
This scene and the guy hanging out the window to check the humidity were quite eye-popping.