IL BARONE CARLO MAZZA stars Nino Taranto whose career parallels that of the great Toto', with whom he often starred in later films. In this piece he is a penniless misfortunate with only his title of baron left. He attempts suicide by turning on the gas, but the gas company is on strike that day! He has his eye on his uncle Casimiro's inheritance but he needs to marry to claim it. And so he hitches up with the most unlikely woman, a vivacious, frisky, Mexican girl named Rosa Pezza and played by the sexy Silvana Pampanini, as a Carmen Miranda clone. It doesn't go well; the compulsively unadaptable baron can't stand the girl's brio, and must reject her...and let her go back to the man she really loves. There are some good moments in this film: a gag with three characters at the hotel desk involving a play on the names Mazza, Pezza, and Pizzo which must rival Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first?" routine for wacky inanity. The very best scene is a spectacularly off-the-wall wedding ceremony, ancient-Roman style, in which all the wedding party and guests are dressed in togas! It's a veritable hoot, as is the cuckoo song sung by Taranto that also incorporates plays on the Mazza-Pezza-Pizzo motif. Guido Brignone directed it all. The film originally played the U.S. only in ethnic Italian showplaces supplied by the distributor Casolaro-Giglio and it was also part of Italian film series-package in New York and other big cities in the 1950's. Despite the film's Marx Brothers mayhem, it's not a movie that travels very well outside its country of origin.
