The Band of Honest Men

Antonio, the caretaker of a Roman apartment block, receives a strange inheritance from a dead tenant: the plates for printing counterfeit money and a quantity of paper. With his friend Giuseppe the tailor and a civil servant, he decides to use them. All three are honest men, which is precisely why they cannot do it. Camillo Mastrocinque directs. Totò plays Antonio, Peppino De Filippo plays Giuseppe. The screenplay is by Age and Scarpelli, the most productive writing pair in comedy Italian style. The premise is classical but inverted: this is not a heist comedy, it is a comedy of being unable to commit the crime. They print the notes and cannot spend them; conscience intervenes at every attempt, and in the end they have to burn the money. Totò does not overplay here. The best passages are the quiet, meticulous scenes of three men trying to learn the printing trade. It was a large success in Italy and is remembered as one of the best loved instances of comedy Italian style in the fifties. Who it is for: viewers who like Totò and classical Italian comedy. Who it is not for: the film runs entirely on dialogue and on the Roman speech of its period, and some of the timing is lost in subtitles.