‘More Than a Miracle’ or — Desire, Dishes and Dumplings?
‘More Than a Miracle’ (1967) is a very weird movie and not just because it’s a post-neorealist fairy tale involving flying monks, mischievous witches and magical dumplings but more because it was directed by Francesco Rosi. Now Francesco Rosi is one of my favourite filmmakers as he’s responsible for some of the greatest Italian movies ever made — ‘Salvatore Giuliano’ (1962), ‘Hands Over the City’ (1963)’, ‘The Mattei Affair’ (1972), etc — but these are fiercely political works shot in a vérité documentary style. So what on earth would his version of Walt Disney-esque fable be like? I simply had to find out.
Spanish Prince Rodrigo (Omar Sharif) must choose between seven aloof Princesses to take as his bride. Not particularly interested in any of them Rodrigo gallops off on his horse where a flying monk hands him a bag of flour and tells the young man to give this flour to any woman he fancies and ask her to make him seven dumplings. If he can eat all seven then she’s not the girl for him. If, on the other hand, he fails to eat them all then he has met a woman as stubborn as he is and, therefore, his true love.
The prince climbs back on his horse and immediately bumps into Isabella, a lowly peasant woman. Isabella looks exactly like Sophia Loren so, naturally, the prince gives her the flour and she, not realising he’s a prince, reluctantly cooks him seven dumplings, secretly eating one for herself before presenting him with the remaining six. It’s true love, even if Isabella hates this annoying, yet undeniably handsome, prick.
What follows is a sort of mash-up of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and a rustic Italian ‘Cinderella’ as a hot-headed nobleman attempts to “train” an equally hot-headed woman and the hot-headed woman attempts to snag herself a prince as a husband. This leads to one of the film’s first potential problems as Sharif’s Rodrigo quickly turns into a pretty off-putting and abusive piece of work, so much so that we can’t quite understand Loren’s determination to claim him.
Is this deliberate in order to highlight the inherently dominating nature of patriarchal systems? Possibly, as although Rosi is portraying a world where it’s men who have the power it’s a power that, much like the flying monk, is somewhat ephemeral, unworldly and fleeting in nature whereas the feminine forces are grounded in the soil with a solid permanency.
Not only that but Loren’s determination to marry the prince seems less driven by romantic desire and more so she can redistribute his wealth amongst the peasants, and the magical help she receives from the witches feels more inclined to instigate a revolution than a marriage (spoilers — it involves the occult disruption of a 3,000 egg omelette). Still, it’s hard to tell if there’s anything being said here other than a fanciful yarn.
The film crescendos with climax so outrageous in its depiction of outdated gender stereotypes it’s impossible to take seriously. The prince devises a contest heavily rigged in favour of Isabella where she and the princesses vying for his hand are given a mountainous pile of dirty dishes to wash and whoever cleans theirs first will be his wife. It’s a scene that really shouldn’t work but Rosi’s vibrant direction, Piero Piccioni’s playful score and Sophia Loren being… well, Sophia Loren, results in what might be the greatest dish-washing sequence put to film. It’s absolutely wonderful.
Rosi began his career as an assistant to Luchino Visconti and that influence certainly shows here, especially in the cinematography which consists almost entirely of expansive shots of the Italian landscape resulting in such a vast and endless sense of space, light and air you can almost feel the soil and smell the scorched grass.
Aesthetic raptures aside, does ‘More Than a Miracle’ work as a movie? I’m not sure if it fully succeeds but it’s fascinating, alluring and I’d be lying through my teeth if I didn’t admit to finding the film an intensely pleasurable experience. And not just because of Sophia Loren’s dumplings.
