There are films and series that seem to arrive in the right place at the right time. It is not known how this could happen: chance is involved, obviously, also accompanied by a certain foresight on the part of producers and distributors. Nobody has the recipe for success, otherwise certain important holes in the water wouldn’t be explained, net of equally important productive investments. Yet sometimes magic happens.

What were the trains of happiness

This is the case of The Children’s Train, the new film by Cristina Comencini arriving on Netflix on December 4th. Based on the novel of the same name by Viola Ardone – an Italian editorial case translated into more than thirty languages ​​- it is the story of a historical event that is very little known today, namely the so-called “happiness trains” organized by the Italian Communist Party to help families poor people of southern Italy after the Second World War. Thanks to the contribution of militants and volunteer families, girls and boys from the poorest areas of the south were welcomed in various cities in the north, even if only for a short period of time, where those who had the opportunity provided for their support. Many of them had nothing to cover themselves, were malnourished and sick, had often lost brothers, sisters, grandmothers and parents during the conflict and lived in absolute poverty. Many of those children returned home to their families but many others, however, chose to remain with foster families driven, perhaps, by the possibility of a better life.

The Children’s Train is set in the immediate post-war period in Naples. Antonietta (Serena Rossi) has recently lost a son due to a serious illness contracted during the war. The father of her children has left for America and she is left alone to take care of Amerigo (Christian Cervone), her only remaining son. Amerigo is a very lively child who doesn’t want to go to school and gets by with little tricks and thefts; worn out by tiredness and poverty, Antonietta decides to turn to Maddalena (Antonia Truppo), a PCI militant in charge of organizing the children’s trains, to ask her to send her son to the north for a period and this is how the child leaves together with many friends from the neighborhoods towards Emilia Romagna also with the hope of everyone returning stronger and healthier.

Once they reach their destination, Amerigo is separated from his companions who had already been given accommodation. Left alone as his mother had been during the war, Maddalena who had accompanied him has no choice but to beg Dorna (Barbara Ronchi) to take him into foster care. A former partisan and trade unionist, Dorna is initially reticent about the idea of ​​taking care of Amerigo but also thanks to the help of her brother, she manages to create the loving and welcoming family that Amerigo had never had until then.

A child is a collective responsibility

Produced by Carlo Degli Esposti and Nicola Serra for Palomar, The Children’s Train also marks the return behind the camera for Cristina Comencini. The director also wrote the screenplay together with Camille Dugay, Furio Andreotti and Giulia Calenda, the latter recently awarded the David di Donatello for best screenplay for There’s Still Tomorrow. The film’s music is written by an exceptional name: Oscar winner Nicola Piovani. There was therefore an important production effort on the part of Netflix, confirmed by the words of Tinny Andreatta, Vice President for Italian content at Netflix, who confirmed the central role that the cinematic adaptation of successful books plays in the Italian and global strategy of platform.

Andreatta also underlined the importance of wanting to bring to the screens a story made of civil commitment, solidarity and hospitality. A story, as Comencini herself underlined, which also questions motherhood and its real, intrinsic meaning. Antonietta and Dorna – the characters played by Rossi and Ronchi, both in a state of grace – are two “imperfect” mothers according to the canon that wants mothers to be self-sacrificing in their role of care, loving and performing even in the most atrocious difficulties; the model of the “angelicized” mother produced by patriarchal culture and espoused by the profit society, has for centuries required women to adhere to an ideal of perfection and therefore unattainable, in most cases condemning themselves, their partners and their children to a state of permanent unhappiness.

The Children’s Train tells us that every woman does her best, that she doesn’t always succeed and that it’s understandable not to succeed. Where the individual cannot reach, however, the community must intervene – the State, politics, neighbors, the school – because raising a child is not an individual act, but a collective responsibility.

The film is also a story of welcome and solidarity in a deeply torn and disunited country where it was often difficult to communicate because a common language did not yet exist. But despite racism, mistrust and mutual differences, the utopia of a shared sense of community was reality somewhere.

We reject migrants, but once upon a time we welcomed them

Watching the film one almost wonders if it is all made up, if the same country that organizes rejections and builds detention camps in Albania is the same one that eighty years ago was capable of setting up a relief and reception system and that truly cared about boys and girls by offering them shelter, food and education. One also wonders why we will see The Children’s Train on Netflix and not on the public service but the answer to why this doesn’t happen is dramatically too obvious.

Rating: 8