Camillo Mastrocinque
Totò, Peppino e la... Malafemmina

Can a one-hour and forty-five-minute movie be considered a masterpiece even though for almost one hour nothing happens at all? Yes, it can. Or rather, only one movie can: "Totò, Peppino e la... malafemmina."

Of the many comedic duos that went down in cinema history (Laurel & Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Fernandel and Gino Cervi, Franco and Ciccio), the duo of Totò and Peppino was the best. The most symmetrical, the one that moved best within the folds of comedic mechanisms. Totò ignited the spark, Peppino caught it, passed it back to Totò, who extinguished it definitively. For those who want to delve deeper into the subject (long and complex, for that matter), I recommend the beautiful book by Alberto Anile, "I film di Totò" (ed.Le Mani, €22.72, 488 pages). But beyond the character Totò, (fanciful, bewildered, serious, formal, puppet, mask, jester), wanting to limit the world of De Curtis only to this film, one cannot deny its great historical significance.

In 1950s Italy, you were either a committed director (Fellini, Antonioni) or you were worth nothing. Production houses wanted only serious and formal films, and they snubbed the so-called popular films, which then were the successful ones. In short, if Antonioni's "La notte" didn't attract anyone, Dino Risi's "Poveri ma belli" filled the theaters. Thus, it happened that honest journeymen and more than capable craftsmen of "popular" cinema, the various Sergio Corbucci, Steno, Fernando Cerchio, Luigi Comencini, Camillo Mastrocinque, Lionello De Felice, could experiment with different forms of comedy without having to bear the lectures of the production, given that no one wanted to know anything about it.
Camillo Mastrocinque was one of the greatest "craftsmen" of Italian cinema. And the greatest director of the duo Totò and Peppino. His were the famous "La banda degli onesti," "Totò, Peppino e i fuorilegge" (which is a reworking of "Sons of the Desert" by Laurel and Hardy, revised and corrected). His masterpiece, however, remains "Totò, Peppino e la... malafemmina," a film shot with few means and little time available, without a script, giving the two actors complete improvisation freedom.

The production was a disaster: Totò was already engaged on other sets, and since he worked only from the early afternoon until late evening (he snubbed the morning), he was rarely seen on set; Peppino was dealing with a theater tour in South America and had limited days; the script was a sieve, entire sequences were missing, the dialogues were incomplete, in short, it was as if it didn't exist; the outdoor shootings, as long as they were shot in Naples and its province, were accessible, but the "transfer" to Milan was a financial collapse. Camillo Mastrocinque immediately realized that if he wanted to shoot a film with only Totò and Peppino, it would take years. He quickly signed three famous names (at least at the time): Teddy Reno, Dorian Gray, and a very young Nino Manfredi.
These three shot most of the film, Totò and Peppino the rest. The nice thing is that the scenes with Totò and Peppino, despite not being excessively long, significantly overshadow the rest of the film. So, for a good hour, one can doze off, for three-quarters of an hour stay awake. And it is precisely those three-quarters of an hour that have entered history, with the anarchic and overwhelming force of Totò and Peppino. In practice, a synthesis of their highest comedic moments. Scenes to be quoted without hesitation, copied, for years now, by any comedian just starting out. From the memorable arrival in Milan (as warned by Mezzacapa, the neighbor of the Caponi brothers, Totò and Peppino: "Milan is foggy. And when it's foggy, you can't see"): here they are arriving at the Central Station, bundled up as if they were leaving for Russia: fur hats, lanterns, boots, and Peppino complaining: "But I feel hot!" The dialogue with the "ghisa" in Piazza Del Duomo, whom they mistake for a German: "We wanted to know the address...", the final restaurant scene full of any kind of revelry, with Teddy Reno singing the "Malafemmina," of De Curtis' memory.

Obviously, the highest moment is the famous dictation of the letter. The highest moment in the entire history of Italian comedy. An unabashed attack on the Italian language and grammar. Franco and Ciccio copied it, and even Roberto Benigni and Massimo Troisi tried in "Non ci resta che piangere" when they wanted to write to Savonarola. That of Totò and Peppino is the summa of a way of conceiving comedy now lost, it is the highest example of how one can be artists even without a scrap of a script. I include the text, recommending watching the film (if they haven't seen it yet) to the new generations, those who think, due to sheer cinematic ignorance, that improvisation is that of Ale and Franz.

"Miss, we come with this to tell you that excuse us if it's little but seven hundred thousand lire ("semicolon!") we find it strange that this year there has been a great death of cows, as you well know ("period! two points Massì, show that we abundantly... Adbondantis in adbondantum!") this money serves for you to console yourself from the sorrow you will have because you must leave our nephew whom we uncles who are ourselves personally send you this because the young man is a student who studies, who must take a laurel, who must keep his head in the usual place that is on the neck. ("A point and a semicolon" "Too much" protests Peppino. "Let it be..." replies Totò, "then they say we are provincial, that we are stingy..."). Greetings indiscriminately, the Caponi brothers (who are ourselves).".