Toto, Peppino, and the Hussy

Two brothers from the countryside learn that their nephew has fallen for a dancer in Milan and set out to buy her off and bring him home. What the film is known for, though, is not the plot but a single scene. In it, Totò and Peppino De Filippo try to compose a threatening letter to the woman. The sequence, built entirely on punctuation, grammar and how one ought to address someone in Milan, was almost completely improvised, the two of them forever wandering off the script. By one account a lighting operator could not stop laughing during the take, the scene had to be reshot, and the man was fired. That letter has been quoted in Italian comedy ever since and is still known by heart. Its flaw is that the rest of the film is thin, several jokes about the north and the south have aged badly, and the woman is written on one level. Who it is for: anyone curious about the classics of Italian comedy. Who it is not for: viewers watching with subtitles who will lose the wordplay.