Masses of refugees flock to neutral San Marino during the war. There are so many of them that no one knows where to put them. At the front line of organizing lodging is the local priest (Antonio Gandusio), who is in open conflict with atheist and vegetarian Vittorio De Sica because he refuses to open the doors of his large home to those without shelter. The rivalry between the two has domestic consequences: De Sica catches his wife talking with the priest and imperiously moves out of the bedroom. Among the refugees is a tall thin man (Aurel M. Miloss, the unknown man of the title) who has lost all memory and wanders around spreading kindness like Saint Francis; he succeeds in reconciling the “Roman”, the only prostitute in the Republic (Anna Magnani), with the villagers and herself. The priest ends up thinking that he is the new Messiah. De Sica sees him oppose the slaughtering of a calf and invites him to his home, giving him his bed (and his wife, radiant, takes the crucifixes from their bedroom so her husband will not be distracted from his marital duties). But the unknown man is plagued by a mystery that compels him to miraculously cross a minefield surrounding San Marino and join a Polish variety troupe. The group’s singer receives a telegram: her family in Warsaw has been slaughtered by Nazis. The stranger’s mind begins to clear, and the dormant secret turns out to be a terrible truth. The film, as can be imagined from the preceding lines, is, to say the least, bizarre: it mixes the pain and remorse of war films with the gaiety of comedy, the reality of disoriented masses and exploding mines with a cryptic allegory shaded with sarcasm. There is enough material for at least five different films. Moreover, the film makes the rare claim that the Polish also liberated Italy. Zavattini, who wrote the screenplay with Giulio Morelli and Cottafavi (though not credited, he seems to have also worked on the film’s directing), sets aside “shadowing” and offers a surprising version of a figure dear to him: the Good.

Andrea Meneghelli