Books, Arts & Manners: Precocious Children, Childish Adults

THERE is no subject more popular in movies (or literature) than growing pains, but the possible divergence of approach is well illustrated by Il ladro di bambini (Stolen Children) from Italy, and This Boy’s Life from Hollywood, U.S.A. The American film is optimistic, the Italian pessimistic, yet with glimmers of hope. Unbounded optimism is what made America strong; guarded pessimism is what makes Europe wise.

To be sure, This Boy’s Life is made from Tobias Wolffs autobiographical novel, and has to end well because Wolff is now an established writer who teaches at Syracuse University. Il ladro di bambini (literally, though less euphoniously, The Child Thief), on the other hand, is fiction, albeit based on a news photograph and other documentary evidence. Toby (i.e., Tobias) in This Boy’s Life is saved presumably by his special talent; the brother and sister in Ladro have no such prowess, and their future remains a question mark. But the real difference is that Toby, even when doubting it, always had the love of his mother; whereas 11-year-old Rosetta was turned by her mother (the father left long ago) into a prostitute at age nine, and nine-year-old Luciano, who cannot be commercially exploited, gets only jeers from his mother.

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John Simon

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THERE is no subject more popular in movies (or literature) than growing pains, but the possible divergence of approach is well illustrated by Il ladro di bambini (Stolen Children) from Italy, and This Boy’s Life from Hollywood, U.S.A. The American film is optimistic, the Italian pessimistic, yet with glimmers of hope. Unbounded optimism is what made America strong; guarded pessimism is what makes Europe wise.

To be sure, This Boy’s Life is made from Tobias Wolffs autobiographical novel, and has to end well because Wolff is now an established writer who teaches at Syracuse University. Il ladro di bambini (literally, though less euphoniously, The Child Thief), on the other hand, is fiction, albeit based on a news photograph and other documentary evidence. Toby (i.e., Tobias) in This Boy’s Life is saved presumably by his special talent; the brother and sister in Ladro have no such prowess, and their future remains a question mark. But the real difference is that Toby, even when doubting it, always had the love of his mother; whereas 11-year-old Rosetta was turned by her mother (the father left long ago) into a prostitute at age nine, and nine-year-old Luciano, who cannot be commercially exploited, gets only jeers from his mother.