Three Men and a Leg

The first feature directed by Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo with Massimo Venier. The three are not partners but reluctant employees in Cecconi’s hardware chain; he is already father in law to two of them and about to become the third’s. They must deliver a leg shaped wooden sculpture he bought. The title nods to Jerome K. Jerome’s 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat; an early draft put a John McEnroe tennis racket in the leg’s place. The film plants short films inside the trip: a crime picture on television in the prologue, a fake neorealist feature seen in a provincial cinema, and a nightmare where Aldo becomes Dracula. That is what the trio’s 1998 special Nastro d’argento cited: the expert use of a short film. The same year they were nominated as best new directors at the David di Donatello, won by Roberta Torre, and Marina Massironi as supporting actress at the Ciak d’oro. The passages set in Gallipoli in Puglia were shot around Rome and on the Lazio coast instead. When the De Gregori song wanted for the beach football scene was refused, Vinicio Capossela went in. A good fit if you accept a structure that moves in episodes and carries sketch logic into cinema. Not for viewers who want one plot carried through to the end.