1. Massimo Mida, Roberto Rossellini , p. 55.

2. Guarner, Roberto Rossellini , p. 38.

3. Mario Verdone suggests the story may have come from a Maupassant short story in which a printer sends to hell everyone he makes calling cards for (Verdone, Roberto Rossellini , p. 40).

4. "A Discussion of Neo-Realism," 76.

5. Peter Bondanella, "Neorealist Aesthetics and the Fantastic: 'The Machine to Kill Bad People' and 'Miracle in Milan,' " Film Criticism , 3, no. 2 (Winter 1979), 26-27.

6. Ibid., p. 26.

7. Interview, Cahiers du cinéma (1954), 1.

8. Guarner, Roberto Rossellini , p. 34.

9. Baldelli, Roberto Rossellini , p. 85. The judgment of Borde and Bouissy is more violent and less convincing: "In 1948, the Fascists were showing themselves again. Everywhere people began preaching pardon, national reconciliation, and the cessation of all weeding out of former Fascists. Rossellini brought to the enterprise a contribution whose modesty is only due to his own awkwardness (118th at the box-office during 1951-52)" (Borde and Bouissy, Le Néo-réalisme italien , p. 109).