BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET Movie Review

The Usual Unidentified Thieves
I Soliti Ignoti
Persons Unknown

The poverty depicted in neo-realist classics like Shoeshine and The Bicycle Thief may not seem like the stuff of comedy, but Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street proves that humor is in the eye of the beholder; this simple, brilliant farce is indeed something to behold. Five down-on-their-luck characters decide to pull off a heist as their only possible ticket out of the day-to-day misery of their lives in the back alleys of Rome. Giving us sharp, terse comic vignettes illustrating the desperation of each of the major characters, Monicelli—a former film critic whose understanding of the crime genre is dazzling—efficiently proceeds to the brilliantly bungled robbery itself, designed as a mirror image send-up of such classic movie heists as those in Jules Dassin's Rififi, John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. A surprisingly big hit in the U.S., where the picture crossed over from art houses to many mainstream theatres in major cities, Big Deal on Madonna Street was itself an inspiration for later films like Peter Yates's The Hot Rock, Louis Malle's Crackers (a direct remake of Big Deal), and even—in spirit at least—Mel Brooks's The Producers. The dream cast includes Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman, Renato Salvatori, and Claudia Cardinale.

NEXT STOP … The Lavender Hill Mob, Topkapi, The Pink Panther

1958 90m/B IT Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman, Claudia Cardinale, Renato Salvatori, Memmo Carotenuto, Toto, Rosanna Rory; D: Mario Monicelli; W: Mario Monicelli, Furio Scarpelli, Suso Cecchi D'Amico; C: Gianni Di Venanzo; M: Pierro Umiliani. Nominations: Academy Awards ‘58: Best Foreign-Language Film. VHS CVC, MRV, DVT