Too Bad She's Bad

Paolo is an honest taxi driver. One day the young and beautiful Lina tries to steal his cab with two accomplices. Paolo wants to take her to the police but Lina talks him round; then he meets her father, the man who runs the family's whole thieving operation and can talk his way out of anything. Paolo will give up neither the girl nor his own honesty, and each side sets about changing the other. Alessandro Blasetti's film adapts a story from Alberto Moravia's Roman Tales. The narrative carries the typical shape of Italian comedy on the rise: poverty is a joke and morality is a negotiation. What matters most is the cast: Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni appeared together here for the first time, beginning a partnership that would run through more than fifteen films. Vittorio De Sica plays the father. Who it's for: Viewers who like Italian comedy, the Loren and Mastroianni pairing, and Rome films of the 1950s. Who it's not for: The narrative is light and the outcome is clear from the start. The writing of Lina is also stuck in the shapes of its period.