Prima comunione (1950)

It is Easter. Mr. Carloni’s eight-year-old daughter is due to make her First Communion. Her father owns a thriving bakery and pastry shop with a steam oven on Via Parigi in central Rome. One morning, he wakes to discover that her dress has not yet arrived, so he decides to go to the dressmaker’s house himself to collect it in his new car, which he can barely drive. On the way, he first gets a traffic ticket, then finally reaches the dressmaker’s home and picks up the dress. But as soon as he has carefully arranged the special-occasion dress in the car, he discovers that the car has broken down. The journey home becomes an ordeal, with taxis hailed by whistle, overcrowded buses, and arguments with everyone. After the most violent of these arguments, Carloni leaves the dress with a lame man so he can have his hands free. A fight breaks out, and when it is over, the lame man has vanished. Carloni tries every way he can to track him down, believing that he has stolen the dress, but to no avail. He returns home and tries to persuade the neighbor, a street sweeper, to give him the dress belonging to his daughter Adelina, who is already ready to make her First Communion, in exchange for twenty thousand lire, one of his suits, shoes, and an Easter egg. But the man cannot give in when the little girl starts crying, and goes to the service. Disappointed, Carloni scolds his wife for not acting in time and tries to comfort his distraught daughter, who sees her celebration falling apart. Fortunately, the beautiful neighbor, whom Carloni has always dreamed of seducing, offers one of her dresses, made from fabric suited to a First Communion dress, though it will need to be altered in half an hour. More time is needed, so Carloni can only try to persuade the parish priest to delay the ceremony a little. Meanwhile, a customer is waiting, unhappy about the surprise he found inside a pastry bought at Carloni’s shop. Carloni agrees to pay him back on condition that he return the egg he bought intact. On the way, out of conscience, Carloni gives a generous alms to a poor man who has no change. At last he reaches the church to speak to the archpriest, who grants him a fifteen-minute delay, but still reproaches Carloni, accusing him of not being a believer and of never seeing him at Mass. The cardinal arrives, and Carloni goes home. But the dress is still not ready, and on top of that, it tears. In the room where his wife has taken refuge, he reproaches her for never listening to him, wasting money, and never being grateful; in short, after twenty years, they are not right for each other. His wife, who has been listening, breaks down in tears and cries out desperately that she is tired of him, of herself, of everything, and unexpectedly slaps him. Just when all seems lost, the lame man arrives, having read the dressmaker’s address on the dress label. Everything changes: his wife stops hating Carloni, who kneels and asks her to forgive him; their little daughter stops crying, and the family hurries happily off to the ceremony that Easter day.