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Rating: Totò has survived despite everything. He battled, but he survived. He survived the attempts of his beloved Liliana (his daughter) to canonize him, the ambushes of the illustrious minds of our country, the plundering of his repertoire by commercial television, the "institutional" initiatives to museumify him, and the transfigurations made of him in the name of this or that interpretation of his infamous "mask". He emerged unscathed even from the usual waffle about the prince/Totò schizophrenia into which many, perhaps too many, have dipped their bread. And then he won his battle against the producers who built films around him filled with little tunes, beachside starlets, Geronimi Meynier (the recipient of boundless hatred through the ages), adolescent love stories. To tell the truth, our man's comedy needed somewhat banal films, just as life is, to erupt with all its liberating force and to reclaim the right to laugh at everything, everyone, and even at oneself. Totò. But what else could you ask for if not that he remains ever and only Totò. Totò is the only "thing" from Naples that constantly defeats its stereotype, always ready to cage him, and his mask passes effortlessly from the stalls where his photos (always the same, chronically rhetorical) tower, to the intellectualism of many writers who periodically dedicate conferences and essays to him, without ever getting fossilized.
Totò, Fabrizi e i giovani d'oggi is one of his best films. In it, Totò plays the role of Cavaliere Cocozza "of the distinguished pastry shop bearing his name," while Fabrizi is accountant D'Amore, an employee at the ministry, father of the aforementioned Geronimo who, according to the script, falls in love with the baker's gentle blonde daughter. The film's merit lies in the confrontation between Totò and Aldo Fabrizi: unlike Peppino, Fabrizi is not a mere sidekick and target for jokes, but a true antagonist who - though in vain - struggles to put a stop to Totò's impetuosity. Fabrizi embodies the modest but very dignified administrative mentality of those years, clashing with the noisy and arrogant exuberance of the parvenu entrepreneur Totò, giving life to a duel that, thanks to a decent screenplay by Castellano and Pipolo, fills the sails of what would otherwise be a static film. Mario Mattoli constructs a believable framework around this pair of aces, also aided by the (truly) legendary Rina Morelli as Mrs. D'Amore and the narrative voice of Nino Manfredi in Ciociaro dialect.
The plot, in simple words, is the usual framework: two young people, (but was the youth of the sixties really that dull?) are responsible scholars, he has a little hump, she has the face of a tamed doe destined for the cinema zoo, who fall in love and intend to marry, though their respective fathers, due to comic incompatibility, are adversaries before even knowing each other. The wives, the silent and tireless motors of the intrigue, do everything in their power so that the young couple can fulfill their nuptial dream. Then the disputes begin over who should bear the costs of the trip, the lunch, the house for the future grandchildren. Once they overcome the obstacle of a batch of "Cocozza" doves gone bad and sold off, with Fabrizi as mediator, in the ministry where accountant D'Amore is employed, equilibrium seems to be reached. But it takes just Cavaliere Cocozza recalling having seen accountant D'Amore years earlier dressed as a militant during a fascist parade to throw everything into disarray. With difficulty, the rift is mended, and the two must come to terms with the fait accompli (by the wives) due to sartorial mishaps. It's clear that it's a plot that not even Fellini could have brought to life, but Totò and Fabrizi suffice (and there's plenty of them) to make it a memorable film. A film which, if I see it playing on television, I cannot help but enjoy, even if by hypothetically watching Dreyer, Wenders, Kurosawa.
At the end of the day, Totò is worth a thousand hours of films recommended by "Il Mereghetti", and this is one of the most beautiful paradoxes of cinema. In short, one goes to the cinema to be moved, not to endure some reduction of philosophical treaties (this has nothing to do with the three aforementioned directors) or, even worse, some labyrinthine, convoluted, or abstruse story. To be moved. And when it comes to emotion, there is no one (apart from Alan Arkin and Buster Keaton) who can turn your soul towards serenity like Totò.
"yes, but I've already seen it and I don't like this film
there was music and tear, and he said 'it's my fault'
there was dream and possession, and she said 'it's your fault'
I want Totò, I don't want love!"
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