Poverty and Nobility

In Naples two starving families share the same rotting house without the money to pay the rent. A young man wants to marry a dancer and needs a noble family to convince her father, so he hires these two. The rented aristocracy act collapses from the first minute, because the people performing it fall on the food out of hunger. Mario Mattoli adapted Eduardo Scarpetta's nineteenth-century play. Totò leads, and the scene where he eats pasta with his hands and stuffs it into his pockets is among the most repeated images in Italian cinema. Sophia Loren appears early in her career in a small but visible part. The comedy is old-fashioned and the hunger is not a joke. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Italian comedy and Totò. Who it is not for: anyone put off by broad acting rooted in the stage.