Nothing Left to Do But Cry

The teacher Saverio and the janitor Mario break down on the road, take shelter at an inn and wake up in 1492, in a Tuscan village called Frittole. First they get pulled into local quarrels and Mario falls for a woman named Pia. Then Saverio fixes on a plan: go to Spain and stop Christopher Columbus before he sails. His reason is personal, so that America will not be discovered and his sister will never meet her American boyfriend. Roberto Benigni and Massimo Troisi directed together and both star. A story from the set explains the tone: the two could not keep a straight face in certain scenes and the takes were repeated over and over. So much extra material accumulated that some episodes were dropped entirely. The scene where they write a letter to Girolamo Savonarola is a nod to an older Italian film. It opened on 20 December 1984 and, with 7 million dollars, was the highest-grossing film in Italy that year. An extended DVD with eighteen minutes of extra footage appeared in 2006, and a restored version returned to cinemas in 2015. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian comedy and two comedians improvising in step. Who it is not for: anyone relying on what a translation can carry. Most of the humour rests on dialect, wordplay and period references.