Il cielo è rosso

Il ciello é Rosso (The Sky is Red) is a dreamlike recounting of the lives of several orphaned adolescents at the end of World War II who set up house in an abandoned, quarantined section of a bombed out Italian town. The overall tone is much closer to Carne's poetic realism than to anything I would normally associate with neorealism. The film stars an actress named Marina Berti, whom I'd never previously heard of (though it turns out she has a long list of credits in mostly obscure Italian films). She does an impressive job of taking a somewhat stereotyped, melodramatic character and somehow making her completely natural and convincing.

The film is a fascinating experiment, and I've never seen anything else quite like it. Absolutely worth watching if you ever get the opportunity.