Written for my Italian Cinema class.
Mario Monicelli’s 1958 film I Soliti Ignoti (or The Big Deal on Madonna Street) blurs genre lines. It is directly inspired by the heist films that had their heyday in the fifties and sixties; the heist films are a throwback to the hard-boiled film noir of the forties. Additionally, I Soliti Ignoti deals 
with many of the same issues that inspired neorealist films like Roma, Città Aperta and Ladri di Biciclette — particularly poverty and drastic societal changes in post-war Italy. But I Soliti Ignoti is more accessible than a typical neorealist film because it relies on comedy to get its message across.
In his September 12, 2008 review for the review site “Ozus’ World,” Dennis Schwartz complains that the film “should have been funnier — it perhaps lost some of its charm by being imported across the Atlantic.” Undeniably, I Soliti Ignoti is a product of the post-war Italian film scene, and some understanding of the film’s historical and cultural context is necessary to fully appreciate it. I Soliti Ignoti is the indirect descendant of forties film noir by way of fifties heist films, and both noir films and heist films tended to be dark in tone. According to reviewer David Ng, writing for the online journal Images, heist movies of the time were “inextricably associated with images of weathered, beaten men in trench coats huddled over a safe in the dead of night. An air of heavy solemnity hung over the proceedings…What Big Deal on Madonna Street did was to take the same characters, scenarios, and images and to somehow make it funny.” Ng goes on to say, “[Big Deal on Madonna Street] pays tribute to its serious-minded antecedents while forging an entirely new direction for the genre.” I Soliti Ignoti may seem fairly unfunny to Schwartz, and a little somber according to our modern conception of comedy, but it managed to give its contemporary Italian audience a sense of optimism while still addressing the issues that dogged a culture emerging from the bleakness of fascism.
The issues at the heart of I Soliti Ignoti are the same issues that are dealt with in neorealist films like Ladri di Biciclette — most noticeably poverty. But what sets I Soliti Ignoti apart from its more serious counterparts is its ability to use a backdrop of desperation and oppression to set up comedic situations; and, conversely, to use comedy to put a kinder face on the hardships being faced by the Italian people. At the end of the film, we find it ironically funny when the indolent Peppe, despite all his best efforts, finds himself swept up into a mob of manual laborers seeking jobs for the day. And while the fact that Mario is an orphan is a grim reminder of the devastating toll that war took on Italy’s population, Monicelli uses it to create a number of playful comic scenarios involving umbrellas or three identical Donald Duck aprons. Ladri di Biciclette never really rose above its sense of despair; I Soliti Ignoti enabled its audience to laugh at the hardships they faced each day.
I Soliti Ignoti is not a mindless, meaningless comedy. It willingly deals with the serious issues of post-war Italian society, but it never gives into to the desolation and darkness of neorealism or noir. Instead, it encouraged its audience to find joy in spite of their circumstances.
watching the rain fall in Vienna
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Our first day in Vienna was not nearly the glorious day we anticipated.
Though after spending a marvelous five days in the Czech Republic, I suppose
Austri...
18 hours ago
