The solution is building a one-room brick dwelling as a squat on unused railway land on the outskirts of Rome.

"[The Roof] is a confirmation of the power of neorealist principles ... De Sica has seen to it that every incident, every detail in every shot contributes to a sense of unstrained, unforced actuality" (Arthur Knight, Saturday Review).

We have secured a recent restoration of the film that marked De Sica's final return to the classic neorealism of Bicycle Thieves after forays into romantic melodrama (Terminal Station) and Neapolitan comedy (The Gold of Naples).

Two non-professional actors (one a soccer star) give winning performances as a newly married couple who, after a family quarrel, are left homeless in Rome.

A bricklayer by trade, the husband conscripts his co-workers to help build an abode overnight, hoping that the police won't find the couple's new "roof" illegal and have it destroyed.