La banda degli onesti

Our hero, Antonio, is the concierge at an apartment complex. He is about to be evicted from his place. A man dies and leaves him real engraved plates from the Italian mint that he had stolen years earlier after working for the government.

A superb situational comedy follows as Antonio rounds up four of his best friends and they proceed to become counterfeiters. Of course, as in all comedies of this type, nothing really goes right.

The acting is superb and much of it is plan deadpan in expression. There are wonderful moments of wordplay at the expense of the character named Lo Turco. There is much classic slapstick comedy as well.

I saw this as part of a summer retrospective at the National Gallery of Art. I urge everyone to seek out the comedies of Toto wherever they are available. I really have never seen better comedy films than the ones starring this wonderful comedian.

There were a hundred and more Totò comedies on film from 1937 to 1967. Many are worth watching just for the sake of Totò's performance, for he really was one of the greatest clowns in movie history. Yet Italian comic cinema in the post-war years is more than just a collection of funny guys. It's a brand of comedy with a lot, a lot of things in it, and when you start digging under and around the jokes, you suddenly realize what a miracle it was. There are basically two epochs in postwar Italian comic cinema : epoch I, the immediate postwar years, whose protagonists are Totò, Macario, Eduardo & Peppino De Filippo, Renato Rascel, Carlo Campanini; epoch II is the invention of a new comedy genre, commedia all'italiana, which finds its first "complete" expression in 1958 with the Monicelli classic 'I soliti ignoti' (in which Totò also holds a supporting role).

Commedia all'italiana (1958-1978) was so powerful that it is an understandable temptation to read the first wave of Italian comedies (1945-196?) only as a vast prelude for the second wave. But that would be a mistake, because in the domaine of comedy things don't happen orderly, with a preconceived plan, like the way intellectuals would like to have it : on the contrary, when director Monicelli, screenwriters Age-Scarpelli, actors Gassman, Mastroianni and Totò did 'I soliti ignoti' (Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958), they never thought about inventing a new comedy genre, even though this is what they were doing. They were only doing whatever they could to entertain their (immense) public, and all of a sudden they struck gold. These things happen by chance, by luck, by random, which is why I call it a miracle.

'La Banda degli onesti' (1955) is a true peak, a summum of the first era of Italian comedy. It is an hilarious farce, full of funny details, crazy situations,mad-hatter characterizations, one-liners to die for. Totò is the central funny guy, but his accomplices don't let him steal the show : Peppino de Filippo for one, another titan of comedy, is irresistible; and as usual, chunky secondary characters abound. Comedy is all about timing and the timing here is flawless, thanks to the perfect Age-Scarpelli screenplay. Veteran comedy director Camillo Mastrocinque knew exactly where to put the camera for maximum effect. With guys like him, it's the camera that follows the actor and not the other way around: no lesson of cinema is given here, only a lesson of laugh !

The film is watchable even today, after 61 years, thanks in particular to Antonio de Curtis Gagliardi Griffo Focas Comneno, that is, TOTO, one of the greatest comic actors of all time, unfortunately, totally unknown today. Who knows today who was Toto? Peppino De Filippo and Giacomo Furia are also sympathetic to their roles. Camillo Mastrocinque, the director, has collaborated extensively with Toto, together they have made many other comedies.

Apparently one of the most funny comedies in the history of Italian cinema. But don't get too excited as this raised me barely a smirk. Some of the comedy, like repeatedly getting the name of Lo Turco wrong, or slamming shop shutters on feet, was indeed tiresome. On the plus side, for a mainstream comedy of the 1950s, the direction is brisk and the plot is quite decent, with a fun twist. Unlike The Lavender Hill Mob, I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Totò is his tenement's janitor, who is about to lose his place because he won't help the new manager pad the accounts. Pepino del Filippo is a printer whose shop is failing. Giacomo Furia is an artist reduced to sign painting, who is about to be evicted. When Totò is left an engraving plate for the 10;0000 lire note and watermarked paper by a dying man, and promises to throw them into the river, the three of them turn counterfeiters. Then Toro's son, Gabrielle Tinti, returns as an officer of the government to track down some new counterfeiters.

It's a vehicle for the popular Totò, and he is in fine form, grimacing and indulging in malapropisms. Del Filippo, his old colleague from Naples, is also in fine fettle, as he keeps trying to follow Toto's incoherent explanations. Their timing is superb, and the story about three small, honest men with big, criminal plans is a lot of fun.