Anniversary of the usual unknown ones
On July 25, 1958, Mario Monicelli's movie "I soliti ignoti" premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. In the English-language box office, the title of this film was translated as "Big Deal on Madonna Street".
Mario Monicelli, who by 1958 was 43 years old and had 15 full-length feature films to his credit, either on his own or in collaboration with Steno (comedy), decided to make a parody film. Moreover, a parody of several genres at once: Italian neorealism, French noir and American gangster dramas. The Italian writer Italo Calvino's short story "Furto in una pasticceria (Theft in a confectionery)", published in 1946, was chosen as the basis for the script for the future film.
To work on the script, Monicelli attracted the duo of scriptwriters, well known to him from his work on several previous comedies, "Age & Scarpelli", as well as the famous Suso Cecchi d'Amico, who participated in the creation of scripts, in particular, films such as "Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves)" by Vittorio De Sica and "Bellissima (Beautiful)" by Luchino Visconti. As a result, Italo Calvino's original source was transformed beyond recognition, and he was not mentioned in the film's credits.
Having set out to create a parody film, Monicelli even wanted to initially name his film "Rufufu", with a clear allusion to Jules Dassin's film "Rififi". However, then he changed his mind and was going to call his film "Madame". So in Italian slang, policewomen are called. But this name had to be abandoned for censorship reasons. Literally at the last moment, Monicelli called his film "I soliti ignoti", which literally translates into English as "usual unknown ones."
Not only the intended genre of the future film was experimental in nature, but also the selection of actors. Monicelli invited Vittorio Gassman and Marcello Mastroianni, who are more familiar to the Italian audience in the images of hero-lovers, and, mainly, in dramas and tragedies, to play the roles of petty crooks-losers. The film's producer, Franco Cristaldi, was initially skeptical about whether a comedy would be possible with such acclaimed heartthrobs in the lead roles. Then Monicelli, to enhance the comic component, entrusted one of the main roles to the famous comedian Toto.
And another experimental move can be considered the involvement of 19-year-old Claudia Cardinale in one of the significant roles, for which this film became the first full-length feature film in Italian cinema and only the second in her creative biography in general. She was still studying at the Center for Experimental Cinematography in Rome and practically did not speak Italian. But, a secret from everyone, she was pregnant. But in this case, the initiative most likely came from Cristaldi. Let me remind you that in 1957, Claude Cardinale (then she still had a French name) won a beauty contest held as part of the Italian Cinema Week in Tunisia. The victory in this competition brought her the title of "The most beautiful Italian woman in Tunisia", an award in the form of a trip to the Venice International Film Festival ... and a contract with Franco Cristaldi.
The film was shot in 10 weeks and at the festival in San Sebastian received the second most important award - the Silver Seashell, which was shared with Alfred Hitchcock's film "Vertigo". The main prize - the Golden Shell - was awarded by the jury of the film festival to the Polish film "Ewa chce spac (Eva wants to sleep)" directed by Tadeusz Chmielewski. In 1959, Mario Monicelli's film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. But members of the American Film Academy preferred Jacques Tati's French comedy "Mon Oncle". Monicelli's picture had no other festival achievements.
On October 2, 1958, Mario Monicelli's film "I soliti ignoti" was released in Italian cinemas, and the next day, the famous Italian film critic Morando Morandini published his review in the daily newspaper "La Notte", in which he noted:
"Questo ballo di ladri rischia di essere il film più divertente della stagione. Non è tutto, uno dei film comici italiani più garbati e intelligenti degli ultimi anni. D'acchito può sembrare soltanto una parodia di celebri film polizieschi di Rififi per esempio. Le analogie non mancano. Ma il ricalco è appena accennato, la comicità del film è autonoma, affidata alla ricchezza delle invenzioni e delle annotazioni, alla varietà dei tipi, alla bravura degli interpreti, alla fluidità del racconto, al ritmo. C'è anche qualcosa di più: I soliti ignoti, è un film a doppio fondo. C'è un'aria di malinconia e di tristezza che è quasi sempre il risvolto della comicità autentica".
Morandini was not mistaken: the Italian moviegoer highly appreciated Monicelli's film. Nearly 5.8 million moviegoers watched it in cinemas in a year, or almost 12% of the country's population. The film was not shown in the Soviet Union.
No less highly than the audience of the late 50s of the last century, this film was rated by modern moviegoers. 69% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. Given this indicator and the above, the rating of Mario Monicelli's film "I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street)" according to FilmGourmand version was 8,463, which allowed it to take 338th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
