Susanna tutta panna (1957) User Reviews

One of the most hilarious contemporary slapstick comedies

[alberto-52 · 10/10 · 8 November 2005]

Definitely, hilarious. One of the collateral effects, I experienced, after seeing this film, was a strong bellyache, so much I laughed, this I remember well. Consider a plot that, starting from a popular saying, mixes and mocks about things like: sex obsession, female chauvinism, industrial espionage, rivalry among stage artists, and even a moment to sting Jules Dassin's "Rififi" with ironical darts. This is "Susanna tutta panna". A contemporary slapstick comedy. The title leads to a flirt that many Italian girls named Susanna use to hear from boys on the streets. It means: "Susanna, you whipped cream!", also meaning that she's sweet, sexy, and last but not least, very pretty. The film opens with two men, every one in his bedroom of course, sleeping and having nightmares. They contort themselves in their beds, while murmuring eagerly, "Oh Susanna, you whipped cream, I want you". In an old fashioned radio style, a narrator asks who would be such Susanna who makes an Inferno out of their nights? A woman? No, the first and mature man is willing to discover how a certain pie is made. Fade to the second man, a lad,also moaning the same words. Does he wish a pie? No, one fades and opens in a sexy blonde, Susanna… Dissolve to an Italian confectioner's,famous for the uniqueness of one of its products, the Susanna Pie,generously topped with whipped cream. A delicacy, the recipe of which hides a secret. Nobody, no concurrent does it this way. Yet one of them buys a unit every day and send it straight to a lab, in order to have such secret unveiled, yet never getting it made. Here enters the female chauvinism. The secret is hidden in a sort of "family secret", kept by its women. No, even their husbands or fiancés are not allowed to know it. The youngest girl of this "family circle", and the prettiest, is also named Susanna, shortly recognized by the audience as the nightmare's blonde. She's engaged to a young confectioner , that the audience then recognizes as the lad who was having nightmares about the aforesaid blonde. They do love each other but do have problems. He wishes to disrupt the tradition, thus having access to the pie's secret , for they are to get married, and should share everything including family secrets. Bewitched, bothered and bewildered, Susanna gives up, but through an unconventional way. She writes down the secret and hides it into a pie, which is dispatched to her lover. Nevertheless, something fells through. Somebody mixes up the pies and the pie and its precious secret is sent to someone else in town. This is the start of a crazy race to find the pie, before it gets its wrong destination. And the first to be checked is the treacherous concurrent, who next have his shop invaded. The pie is found, destroyed (another is given to repair the fuss) but…it's not the right one. The concurrent then realizes that its idolized secret was free in town and joins the race in order to get it first. During the search, the harmless Susanna accidentally enters a flat, where a gang was preparing to rob a jewelry store, by using the same strategies taken from the film Rififi, the classic thriller by Jules Dassin. Susanna is seized, tied up and gagged, but is freed by a thief who, besides dazzled at her, is kind hearted (Nino Manfredi). The racing teams finally discover that someone had ordered the missing pie to be delivered at a theater, where a cast , nearly disrupted by rivalry among actors, was staging…Hamlet. Then, the raiders of the lost pie start an anxious search through the dressing rooms. A guy (don't remember at the service of whom he was) gets the pie but hides it into a very small room, where, over a chair, a SKULL was standing. Can you guess why? Exactly. It was just under the hole from where "Hamlet" would take a skull for his famous "to be or not to be, that is the question" monologue. The guy substitutes the skull for the pie and runs. On the stage, the actor gets a shovel, and…instead of a skull a whipped cream pie comes out. Terrified he improvises a bunch of rubbishes. The audience doesn't understand what is going on, but the show does it. "Hamlet", absolutely furious, thinks he has been sabotaged by his rivals . As a revenge, Ophelia's flowers (for the madness scene) are changed into vegetables. For instance, a rose is substituted…by an artichoke! The audience boos, but a stage critic adores it: "Bravo! That's vanguard!!". Enough? Well, in short: the pie is gotten as well as the precious envelope inside. Susanna and his lover hug and kiss each other and one supposes they are to live happily forever after. Now you know why I had a bellyache that night, after the movies.