Anna Magnani plays a simple-minded peasant who allows abearded vagabond (played by Fellini, who also wrote the story and wasassistant director) to seduce her, thinking he is St. Joseph. The"miracle" of her pregnancy is met by scorn from her fellowvillagers who clamp a basin on her head for a halo. Rossellini's filmwas similarly ridiculed and eventually blasted as blasphemous, not inRome but in Cardinal Spellman's New York, eventually to become the testcase for Constitutional protection of the cinema. The Miracle wasoriginally exhibited as part of a trilogy, L'Amore (Ways of Love), withcompanion pieces by Renoir and Pagnol.