In an age of fanatical sectarianism such as our own, mentioning words of brotherhood, making overtures for more mutuai understanding, is an act worthy of praise but difficult if one wants to avoid the traps of easy rhetoric and sentimentality and maintain a tone of simple human truth. (…) Works of this kind include Gente così directed by Cerchio and written by Guareschi: as noble a film in its undertaking as it is mediocre in its production. (…) It is obvious that the film belongs to Guareschi’s imagination: the whole first part shows traces of his easily recognizable sense of humor, which often explodes in appealing sporadic observations, though they are not always harmoniously integrated to the work as a whole. If we can even talk about unity. In fact, this seems to be one of the film’s greatest flaws: the lack of logical coherence, a scattering of secondary and transitory interests that interrupt the story, creating an uneven style and leading to the tritest of conventions. Only in the ending do the filmmakers show their ability to be more concrete and coherent. The mushy tone stops, and the film culminates with the tragedy of death. This conclusion in Guareschi’s vision is meant to reflect a fatalistic concept of life: why bother scratching each other’s eyes out when sooner or later death will come along and take care of everything. (…) Guareschi and Cerchio did not manage to back up the few [issues] they present with firm conviction. This inability can be ascribed to their clear preference for a punch line resolved in words as opposed to images; and it is exacerbated by inconsistent direc­tion. Fairly good the sideline characters of the mayor and the parish priest, played by Saro Urzì and Camillo Pilotto.

Carlo Rossi, “Hollywood”, April 1950