The film’s climax is as meticulously staged and almost as long as the legendary half-hour heist sequence in Rififi, 3 but replaces the Frenchmen’s laconic professionalism with the Italians’ noisy ineptitude. This mood, however, is immediately undermined by the appearance of two old lags – one whose decrepit but ravenous toothlessness provides running gags throughout the film – and completely destroyed when the simple theft results in a blaring car alarm and the pathetic attempt of the codgers to outrun two policemen on bicycles. 2 The opening credit sequence seems to confirm this – the night-time urban scene scored to urgent jazz rhythms is pure 1950s noir (already moving as a genre to self-referential bombast think of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil that same year). Monicelli himself has expounded this view, describing Big Deal as a ‘caricature’ and ‘parody’ of Jules Dassin’s “dramatic” and “scientific” heist film Rififi ( Du rififi chez les hommes, 1955). But a problematic one it has contributed to the film’s ongoing reputation as a genre spoof. So – Big Deal on Madonna Street is a great title. His fellow convict, the braggart Peppe (Vittorio Gassman), is punished to a lesser degree, by getting caught up in a work detail at the film’s close this is a vision of hell for his aghast sidekick Capannelle (Carlo Pisacane), and certainly looks very like the prison Peppe was confined to earlier. Unlike his fellow petty criminals, Cosimo has little interest in family, friendship, loyalty, love, humour, or food – his self-serving entrepreneurship is revealed as anti-social and even inhuman. The one clear villain of the piece comes to a sticky end: Cosimo (Memmo Carotenuto), whose bungled car-jacking starts the film and whose planned heist forms its main content. Nevertheless, Monicelli enforces a strict morality. Monicelli guys the metaphysical pretensions of such directors, creating a determinedly human-scale purgatory or hell-on-earth his protagonists may be ‘fallen’, but they are incorrigible and buoyant. ‘Big deal’ also implies an unimpressed shrug of the shoulders – ‘big deal’, so what? ‘Madonna Street’, by contrast, suggests some sort of spiritual narrative in a local context – it could be a contextual reference to the profound and presupposed place of religion in Italian life, but it also raises the possibility of redemption for this film’s losers.įilmed on location in Rome’s outlying wastelands, abandoned Fascist building projects and the husks of modernist reconstruction, Big Deal shares its mise-en-scène with several neo-realist films by Vittorio de Sica and Roberto Rossellini, or the post-neo-realism of Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria ( Le notti di Cabiria), released the previous year. 1 The title sets up a number of expectations, not least the bathos in the phrase ‘big deal’, which is hardly the language used by existentialist hoodlums in the Hollywood and French crime dramas director Mario Monicelli seemed intent on skewering. It was the third (at least) tried out by the film’s English-language distributors after Persons Unknown and The Big Deal. By the end of this comprehensive film you will surely understand why Leonardo is considered by many to be one of the greatest artists of all time.Big Deal on Madonna Street is such a great, catchy, and memorable title that you would hate to lose it.
Join us on a worldwide tour to travel across eight countries – from Italy to Poland – to experience all of Leonardo’s works in situ from the comfort of your own home. Amidst this collection of masterpieces, marvel at The Last Supper, Lady with an Ermine, Ginevra de’ Benci, Madonna Litta, Virgin of the Rocks and what is widely considered the most famous artwork of all time – The Mona Lisa. Leonardo’s peerless paintings are at the core of this film, offering unparalleled access for the first time. Many feature films have showcased the genius of Leonardo but none have ever examined in such detail the most crucial element of all: his art.
This film is an unprecedented look at arguably the world’s most celebrated artist. LEONARDO DA VINCI AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HIM BEFORE
0 kommentar(er)
