#3 - BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET (1958)
Directed by - Mario Monicelli (Italy)
Much like Arthur Seaton comes constantly close to knowing, for some there is only one way out of spending most of their adult life on a factory floor, or the likes; crime.
The Commedia all'Italiana has always widely been driven by proletariat issues. This unlike, for instance, American cinema, which to this day continues to steer towards the ambitious middle class, perhaps due to the influence of the myth of the American dream, or the endurance of the scars from the Red Scare (which will be talked about more in the following entries.)
Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street is probably one of the most internationally beloved Italian comedies, at least as far as non-Fellini films are concerned. It was remade in the US, and its formula has been reused in countless other international productions. So, its plot-line feels a lot like Rififi, the 1955 film by Jules Dassin about a man getting a gang together for an elaborate robbery. But it really has nothing to do with Rififi on so many levels. In fact, it has more to do with the blending of the bleak melodrama of Italian neo-realism and that poignant, bitter Italian sense of humour. It is not a coincidence that the film should star Italy's most popular ever cinematic clown Totò in a cameo role.
The rest of the characters are working class people. Even more so than that, most are men who have reached the so-called age of maturity, and are far from being your traditional crooks. They have adult respinsibilities. But they look with disdain upon workers, and do their best to avoid manual labour. In a final sequence, one of the men queues up for work. A much older companion of his warns him horrified "don't you know what they'll do to you in there? They'll make you work!" But given the story's satirical outcome, the you-gotta-do-what-you-gotta-do awakening experienced by Big Deal's pivotal crooks is almost a relief for all involved, including the audience.