Totò, Peppino and... the Sweet Life

Two brothers from the provinces hear that their niece has gone astray in Rome and travel to the city. She actually wants to be an actress and her circle comes from that world. The uncles find themselves in nightclubs, parties and on the edges of film sets; they misunderstand everything they see and make it worse the more they try to fix it. The subject is not morality but the distance between the provinces and the capital turned comic. The uncles' measure comes from a small town and nothing in Rome fits it; the film makes them ridiculous without clearing the city either. The form is a direct parody. It imitates the conventions of the famous film about Roman nightlife released around the same time: the parties, the clubs, the celebrities, the sense of emptiness. The difference is that here everything is built as a joke. Totò and Peppino De Filippo are at the centre. The pair appeared together in a great many films through the fifties and sixties, to the point where those productions are spoken of in Italy as a genre of their own; most of their scenes were shot open to improvisation. Sergio Corbucci directs. Francesco Mulè is in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like Totò and period parody. Who it is not for: anyone who does not know the film being parodied; some of the jokes fall flat without that context.