Alessandro Benvenuti
Ad Ovest Di Paperino

It was the 1970s. Many things were changing in Florence.

Initially, there were I Giancattivi, a theatrical collective formed by Alessandro Benvenuti, Francesco Nuti, and Athina Cenci, famous for some shows like "Il teatrino," "Nove volte su dieci più una," "Italia 60" or "Pastikke." Most likely, the older ones (and certainly not me) will remember this project.

But in the 1980s, there was also a desire to better express their style, obviously on film.

And there was a need for someone capable of replacing the great performers (the so-called "Monsters") before them, who at the time intended to pursue new paths, less comedic and more committed. There was a need for something that could fill the void left by the departure of television variety shows or the lack of contributions from the historical screenwriters of the '50s and '60s. All this while television was being renewed, aiming to offer new types of entertainment: music, cabaret, and a new kind of humor (unfortunately nowadays poorly evolved, but very poorly, but that’s a discussion I’d prefer to have elsewhere, not here).

Well, the appearance of Giancattivi on the big screen is unfortunately the only one where they are all together. Their end, and meanwhile the beginning for Benvenuti.

Yes, because "Ad Ovest Di Paperino" is undoubtedly their swan song, given the disputes during the making of the film (but even previously there were some detachments among the members), among each component. Then the break, and consequently the turning point. Two-thirds of them decided to take a different path. Nuti and Benvenuti, each on their own path (Cenci will continue to follow the second on the set of other films anyway), moved on to directing various comedies of which they would also be the protagonists, some succeeding well, some less so.

This work will remain. It is not an idiocy incapable of taking off as it should. It's a great example of that particular, innovative, typically Florentine comedy, perhaps not easily understandable, but worthy of being called comedy.

A piece entirely developed around the three of them, the protagonists. Marta (Athina), a strange painter who believes in stories of princes turned into pigeons and who despises newborns, Francesco (Nuti), a likable unemployed person heading to the employment office, and Sandro (Alessandro), a great storyteller and idler very sure of himself, residing at a private radio station.

The film is filled with original and very funny scenes (like the Tampax scene, complete with a police chase, or that of Veleno, one of the three friends whom our group decides to meet) that are all a sequence during the wandering of the three merry "do-nothings" throughout the film. There is no screenplay. But strangely, it's as if one were there, hidden somewhere but present. And represented by their journey. A journey sometimes grotesque, sometimes surreal, sometimes paradoxical, sometimes nonsensical, in a few words: unusual.

But at the same time, a mirror of an era, a document not to be underestimated, a demonstration that true Florentine comedy is not, fortunately, the usual Pieraccioni or Ceccherini of the moment, but it is (or perhaps it would be better to say it was?) something capable of going beyond, right there, in that fraction of Prato from which the film takes its title. Paperino, indeed.

Only, here to create something lively and amusing, there was absolutely no need for the homonymous Disney character.

"Notturno!" "What is it?" "IT'S THAT I FELL IN LOVE WITH YOU!"