In the wake of the escapist comedies, Giuseppe De Santis, a founder of neorealism (Bitter Rice, 1949), desired to restore the social concerns of that movement to the comedies, and the result was Giorni d'Amore, a film set in a southern, lower-class milieu that celebrates the spirit of the rural proletariat while it satirizes its quirks. It is basically a love story, with Marcello Mastroianni and Marina Vlady giving endearing performances as young lovers whose families decide to avoid the expense of a formal wedding by forcing them into a pre-nuptial night together, thus necessitating a hasty, informal marriage to "save face" in the village. Surrounding this tale is a fine and observant portrait of the local color, figuratively and literally, this being one of Italy's first color films.