The Miracle
(Il Miracolo), from L'Amore
“As Godard's Je vous salue, Marie wends its way to the States amidst howls of protest about its irreligiosity and obscenity for treating the divine in human terms, it is pertinent to remember that Rossellini's Miracle was banned in New York on similar grounds and eventually became the source for the Supreme Court's 1952 decision that guaranteed the screen protection of the First Amendment. Without revealing what part of the plot (from a story by Fellini) caused the uproar, the film offers audiences the possibility of seeing Anna Magnani play a type later adapted for Giulietta Masina. In its ‘religious' terms, the film may point to a merging of the Holy Mother and Christ, motherhood as the Cross itself. A hint of the issues at stake may be gathered from Jose Luis Guarner's statement that everything in the film is ‘carnal almost to the point of obscenity.' In place of the ‘transcendental style' often associated with religious visions, Rossellini gives us an ‘immanent style', with all the alarm that this style elicits from the merely pious.” William Nestrick