Il tetto

In Rome, housing is scarce. While desperately searching for somewhere to live, newlyweds Luisa and Natale, the latter a bricklayer, hear of a law passed by the authorities according to which anyone who builds a house on public land overnight cannot be removed from it. The key characteristic of a finished house is that it must have a roof. “What’s special about the plot – unlike the earlier films by De Sica-Zavattini – is that it has an optimistic ending. The motif of solidarity with the “common people” already discernible in MIRACLE IN MILAN has shifted into the fundamental basis of events here” (Ulrich Gregor)