Os Eternos Desconhecidos

I had seen "I Soliti Ignoti" a long time ago and I can't say that I remembered it well. But thanks the the Criterion Collection I came across it on DVD and have to say that it's one of the funniest films that I have ever seen.

A bunch of amateurish bunglers believing themselves to be capable thieves attempt a break-in of hilarious proportions. Gassman shines as Peppe the improvised leader of the pack, as these "Usual Suspects" move from one mishap to another.

Miss. Cardinale adds some real eye candy, as usual.

SEE IT!!!!!!!

One character approaches another to get him to take the rap for a crime. But he can't do it, so he suggests someone else. The third character can't do it either. Soon a half dozen people are in search of someone to take the rap. They eventually decide that they need someone without a previous criminal record. But none of them knows anyone without a criminal record.

I had no idea it was going to be a comedy when I first started watching it. By the end I was laughing out loud. It's a little slow, but many Italian movies are a little slow and caper films usually build slowly. But it is thoroughly enjoyable with some gags that I've never seen anywhere else in film. Cosimo's bank heist was very amusing.

If you've just recently watched The Bicycle Thief, and are depressed by the bleakness of life shown there, this movie is the perfect antidote. It shows the lighter side of people who are down on their luck.

One day, there's gonna have to be a festival for heist-themed movies. "The Killing", "Topkapi", "The Italian Job", "The Bank Job" and the Ocean franchise are obvious entries, but Mario Monicelli's Academy Award-nominated "Big Deal on Madonna Street" ("I soliti ignoti" in the original Italian) also needs to be in there. Unlike most of the heist-themed movies - either lighthearted comedies or film noirs - this one is a farce. Basically, all sorts of mishaps befall the criminals in the process of the planning and execution. Talk about commedia dell'arte!

This strikes me as one movie that they had a lot of fun filming, and I highly recommend it. Don't listen to anyone who's not interested in watching old movies/black and white movies/foreign movies. If ever there were one of those movies that you have to see, it's this one. It's a mamma mia of the best type!

"Rififi" was a wonderful heist film and spurred on similar films like "Bob le Flambeur" and "Grand Slam". All these films showed elaborate robberies that were carried out with perfect precision. The teams were professional and highly skilled in each. However, with the Italian film "Big Deal on Madonna Street", we have a film that appears a lot like these other films but turns out to be a comedy of errors--where NOTHING goes right.

The film begins with a guy getting caught for a petty crime and sent to jail. The problem is that he has a good plan for a robbery that will make him rich--and he and his gang of inepts cannot do the heist. So, they find an idiot who is willing to take credit for the crime that the boss is in jail for so that he can be released. Well, things DON'T work as they plan...and that's pretty much the way the entire film goes.

This comedy is pleasant and enjoyable. However, I did not love the film and didn't quite enjoy it as much as the average viewer. It isn't that I disliked the film...it's just that it never really made me laugh out loud very often. It was funny...but only mildly so. Decent acting, however, and I did enjoy watching everyone yell so much....and made me wonder if this is in any way true of Italians (I sure assume it's not)!

An ensemble movie with multiple minor stories built around the main theme of a big heist on Madonna Street. Half a dozen or so hapless crooks decide to apply "scientific methods" to their plan to sneak through coal chutes and over rooftops into a vacant apartment. They will then use a car jack to break through a wall into the office next door where a fortune is stashed away in a safe. That's about as far as medical discretion will allow me to go in revealing the plot.

There have been many carefully planned caper movies, before and after this one, like "The Asphalt Jungle." Some have even been turned into comedies, like Woody Allan's "Small Time Crooks." But this was one of the first I'm aware of that turned the caper movie into a ridiculous farce.

I think I'll give one example of the kind of gags you can expect, to illustrate the style. To get to the vacant apartment the thieves must tiptoe across a skylight in the middle of the night and climb through a window on the other side. They are slipping along the metal framework, cursing each other, when suddenly blinding lights go on in the room underneath them and they must throw themselves flat on the glass to avoid detection. A young couple enter the room below and begin a loud argument about whether she really loves him and whether he's been unfaithful to her. The accusations are shouted back and forth, while 10 feet above them the immobilized gang alternately doze and gesture impatiently at one another as their carefully plotted timetable is all shot to hell.

Well, alright, one more. One of the gang, a master photographer, Marcello Maistroianni, is assigned to make a movie of the opening of the safe, shooting from across the rooftops through an open window, so the combination will be registered on film. The gang watch the resulting film and moan while pairs of underpants on a clothesline drift across the office window and there are inserts of the photographer's baby crying. At the moment the combination is to be revealed the film stutters and slips off its sprockets.

I can't help it. Stop me before I describe more. Okay -- last one. Two men have an argument in which a knife is produced. They fling angry insults back and forth, and one of them departs, slamming the wooden door behind him. The remaining man sneers at the door and hurls the knife at it. The knife doesn't stick, it bounces off.

It's really impossible to recommend this too highly. What a lot of fun.