Taking part in a poll on ICM for the best films of 1939,I started gathering up titles to watch. Picking up the first adaptation of The Postman Always Ring Twice and the Henri-Georges Clouzot co-written Sci-Fi The World Will Shake,I found an Italian Comedy with not one IMDb review,which led to me changing that.
The plot:
Working as a nurse, Cipriano Duval tries to get a fellow nurse to go out with him by sending love letters to himself. Running away from the hospital after all the doctors try to inject him, Duval unknowingly runs into an underworld gangster,who kills a woman and leaves all the evidence on Duval. Waking up after fainting at the murder scene, Duval finds he has woken up to fame from an oncoming show trial.
View on the film:
Set in France but filmed in Italy, co-writer/ (with 11 others!) director Mario Mattoli & cinematographer Arturo Gallea open the film with a note about how the institutions shown bare no relation to their real life counter parts. Cheekily tearing the note down, Mattoil hit the institutions with immature (but very funny) broadside satire,from ice cream sellers walking up and down the courtroom during never ending trials,to the press getting their snaps for a "show trial." Backed by a whimsical score from Vittorio Mascheroni and Luigi Spaggiari, Mattoli and Gallea glide Duval into hilarious slap-dash Slap-Stick set- pieces of the curtain going down on Duval's trial,and Duval trying to outrun the entire hospital staff from injecting him in the bottom.
Put together by a large group of writers,the screenplay is impressively coherent! Placing him in respectable institutions, (hospital, court and the stage) the writers allow Duval to run wild and make a mockery of them all,as Duval tries to woo a nurse,and finds out that being accused of murder opens the door to the stage. Running at lightning speed, Erminio Macario gives a brilliant performance as Duval,thanks to Macario relishing the frantic Comedy Duval hands out in his show trial.
The plot:
Working as a nurse, Cipriano Duval tries to get a fellow nurse to go out with him by sending love letters to himself. Running away from the hospital after all the doctors try to inject him, Duval unknowingly runs into an underworld gangster,who kills a woman and leaves all the evidence on Duval. Waking up after fainting at the murder scene, Duval finds he has woken up to fame from an oncoming show trial.
View on the film:
Set in France but filmed in Italy, co-writer/ (with 11 others!) director Mario Mattoli & cinematographer Arturo Gallea open the film with a note about how the institutions shown bare no relation to their real life counter parts. Cheekily tearing the note down, Mattoil hit the institutions with immature (but very funny) broadside satire,from ice cream sellers walking up and down the courtroom during never ending trials,to the press getting their snaps for a "show trial." Backed by a whimsical score from Vittorio Mascheroni and Luigi Spaggiari, Mattoli and Gallea glide Duval into hilarious slap-dash Slap-Stick set- pieces of the curtain going down on Duval's trial,and Duval trying to outrun the entire hospital staff from injecting him in the bottom.
Put together by a large group of writers,the screenplay is impressively coherent! Placing him in respectable institutions, (hospital, court and the stage) the writers allow Duval to run wild and make a mockery of them all,as Duval tries to woo a nurse,and finds out that being accused of murder opens the door to the stage. Running at lightning speed, Erminio Macario gives a brilliant performance as Duval,thanks to Macario relishing the frantic Comedy Duval hands out in his show trial.
