Oscar Blando

Children on the brink of growing up, roaming the working-class San Giovanni neighborhood south of Rome's Stazioni Termini, experience the small tragedies and triumphs of adult life in Castellani's enjoyable and finely tuned portrait. A contemporary reviewer noted in 1949, "Definitely an authentic tranche de vie--yet lacking in the tiresome moral bind of the naturalists, the dreary political aims of the populists." (National Gallery of Art)