Paolo Villaggio
This brisk, engaging documentary surveys the life, work, and legacy of Vittorio Gassman, the Italian screen icon who began his illustrious career as a serious dramatic stage actor before going on to subvert that image in classic works of commedia all’italiana by Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street), Dino Risi (Il Sorpasso), and Ettore Scola (We All Loved Each Other So Much). Through a wealth of interviews, film clips, and archival footage, Sono Gassman! reveals how Gassman’s comedic screen persona cannily reflected and critiqued mid-20th-century Italian society, while shedding light on the complex inner life of the man himself.
Cetto and its city council were arrested, but in prison the conspiratorial former mayor makes no earning name as the gratitude of the powerful secretary. These decide to replace some MPs mysteriously killed precisely with Cetto and two other characters: Rodolfo Favaretto and Frengo Stop
In Milan, Matteo is an underemployed physicist, giving the occasional lecture at a university while working at a PR firm where he knows he'll be fired. Without his really trying, two women are attracted to him, a blond and a brunette. The blond is Angelica; they meet smoking on the office rooftop. To his surprise, she has clout in the company and soon has him flying off (with her) to make presentations. The brunette is Beatrice, a new flatmate, hoping for a teaching job in the national service. Angelica dangles a posting with her in Barcelona; Beatrice is simply Beatrice. Will Matteo figure out what he wants - and decide before opportunity passes him by?
Garage owner Angelo and big-time film producer Alberto find themselves occupying neighbouring beds in a Rome hospital after suffering heart attacks. Alberto is a gregarious joker - and chain smoker - who has a strong effect on the impressionable Angelo. However, as one of the men's condition deteriorates, the other becomes more deeply involved in his personal life.
Six youngsters aged between 20 and 30 years old, stranded within the restricted values of a provincial city, constrained to live in an emotional void, lacking dreams and acknowledged values, brought together by their rage and feeling that they have nothing left to lose. Luca finds happiness with his ex-girlfriend's outgoing brother Riccardo. When a gay-bashing leaves Riccardo dead, Luca lures the perps to an abandoned factory basement, where he pretends to join in on their sadistic torture of a passerby before he turns the tables.
Carabinieri is an Italian television series that aired on Canale 5 from March 2002 to July 30, 2008. The series is an action thriller with added elements of comedy, and has been compared to the soap opera format. It told the story of the police barracks located in Città della Pieve.
It is 90 AD, and the Roman Empire is being run by the Emperor Domitian, who has declared himself to be God and ruler over heaven and earth. The Christians, who do not recognize his divinity, are a thorn in his side and he is having them cruelly persecuted. The small village in Asia Minor to which the aged apostle John has withdrawn is also attacked by Roman soldiers.
In this bizarre and darkly comic fantasy, Antonio (Sergio Rubini) is a man who was born with unusually large incisors; his freakishly huge teeth make him an outcast from his peers as a child, and he attempts more than once to break off the offending choppers. The emotionally fragile Antonio was further devastated at the age of 12 when his mother (Anouk Grinberg) died, and as a man, he's become obsessive and controlling in his relationships with women. Antonio is convinced that his girlfriend Mara (Anita Caprioli) has been unfaithful to him -- with her dentist (Tom Novembre), of course. After Antonio confronts Mara in a moment of anger, she responds with rage, and strikes him in the face with a large ashtray, breaking off one of his teeth. Antonio now must travel across the land, going from dentist to dentist in search of someone who can make a crown that will suit his extra-large smile. Denti was shown in competition at the 2000 Venice Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
75-year-old Giuseppe De Metrio has spent 30 years in Geneva, as foreign worker for the Broyer company. Upon retirement, he returned to Puglia, Italy, where his family had continued to live. His only grandchild, 7-year-old Carla, is blind. The whole family looks forward hopefully to the day when Carla's sight can be restored by means of a cornea transplantation. After a heart attack, Giuseppe decides to wait no longer and returns to Switzerland to ask his former boss Mr. Broyer for the money necessary for the operation, as an old promise binds the two men. Intended as a 48-hour trip, Giuseppe and Carla's visit in Switzerland becomes a journey that both grandfather and granddaughter never dreamt of...
Ugo Fantozzi was resurrected from the company where he worked because of a crisis, how it will end?Tenth and final chapter of the film series of Fantozzi character.
Sergio Colombo is an insurance agent. He had just gone through a divorce so he is a little bit scattered. Wanting to unwind he plans to go to vacation with a magnificent girlfriend but suddenly he is ordered off to Canada in order to sign an important contract. At the airport Colombo accidentally gets on a plane that flies in a direction directly opposite to Canada - to Bankgok.
Ugo Fantozzi has been ejected from Heaven and is sent back to Earth for a short period of time until the staff in Heaven can get Fantozzi a place there. Fantozzi goes through a variety of unfortunate experiences, such as rescuing his retro punk granddaughter Uga, and having to pay a vast telephone bill due to frequent chat line conversations. He ends up getting arrested instead of his ex-boss, who was originally charged with corruption. Just as he is about to enjoy the World Cup Final with Italy, he is called back into Heaven. Can he find peace once again?
If Sergio Colombo, a middle age man, doesn't want to lose his job, has to attend a full immersion English course in UK. So Sergio leave his wife and son and reaches a school full of terrible kids. Obviously he is the only adult and the worse student. Learning English hasn't been never so hard.
In 1944 in Tuscany, a group of boxers facing the disasters of the Second World War, during the intrusive presence of the Germans and the Americans, organizes rigged matches to make some money and travel from town to town, hoping to participate in local fairs. A young black American soldier, believed missing, and a girl who refused to marry accompany the ramshackle group.
One by one, with a sweet but inexorable rate, Ugo's colleagues, go to a better life. When Ugo is attending at one of the innumerable funerals, he and the priest remain involved in an accident. The doctor says that Ugo as only one week left to live
It tells the story of a general who is about to cut down an old forest for the sake of financial gain, but discovers that the forest is inhabited by invisible spirits
A bureaucratic snafu sends Marco Tullio Sperelli, a portly, middle-aged northern Italian, to teach third grade in a poor town outside Naples
A parable on the whisperings of the soul that only madmen and vagabonds are capable of hearing. The odd couple, Ivo Salvini, a fake inspector of wells, and Gonnella, a former prefect, wander through the Emilia-Romagna countryside and discover a dystopia of television commercials, fascism, beauty pageants, rock music, Catholicism, and pagan rituals.
Fantozzi is now retired but continues to go to the office where it is held up as a fine example of employees intending to do career.
Ciottoli is a journalist with absolutely no prospective for his career, with a lot of debts and a mobster that want him died. Unexpectedly he win the national lottery (almost Eur 2.5 Mln) and try to remain unanimous hiding the winner ticker into his typewriter. Ironically his director order to him to write an article on the mysterious winner. When he is back home he discovers all his furniture has been confiscate and will go on a public auction. He will try desperately to buy back the worthless typewriter while all his previous problems still follows him, especially the mobster...
Ugo Maria Volpone is a very rich shipowner. He dissimulates to be close to die in order to have the attention of three of his friends: Corvino, Voltore and Corbaccio. The three accepts every kind of humiliation and money loss in order to inherit all Volpone's fortune. Volpone hires a new servant, Mosca. Together the two start to realize new jokes and extortions to the three greedy fake friends. Who will win the inheritance?
After thirty years in the big corporation, Ugo Fantozzi retires. Suddenly, he needs things to do in everyday life and he tries a number of activities: helping Pina shopping; babysitting grand-daughter Uga; a trip to Venice; learning golf. He then fakes documents to get a new job, but in the end he becomes a hypochondriac and doesn't even take a long-awaited chance with Miss Silvani.
3 episodes set in Monte Carlo. In the first one a priest is compelled to become the lover of a princess. In the second, a con woman tries to cheat an insurance man. In the third, a man has to deal with his wife's suicidal attempts.
Funny, entertaining comedy with a few storylines. All of them have one thing in common - a resort town of Rimini in Italy.
Hard and dangerous service. Needed to extinguish fires, but what if there is a fire between the legs?
In order to get some money Gianni Zappi tries to organize an insurance fraud by drowning his yacht.
In this second episode Dalmazio and Egisto come, respectively, from the prison and the insane asylum. They risk a second arrest for their awkwardness so they return from their "uncle" who is willing to help them.
Frenetic in its pacing and with miniscule character development, this trite slapstick farce stars three Italian comics - Paolo Villaggio, Lino Banfi, and Massimo Boldi as the idiot-nephews of a wealthy invalid (Enrico Maria Salerno). The uncle's plan is to teach the trio how to successfully steal for a living but the plan does not have a chance against their exaggerated ineptitude.
Superfantozzi (1986) is an Italian film from 1986. It is the fifth film in the saga of the unlucky clerk Ugo Fantozzi, played by its creator, Paolo Villaggio. In this film, Fantozzi is portrayed in a surreal historical journey, from Genesis to 1980s.
A series of skits involving customers and store personnel from several departments of the big department store.
Fracchia is desperate: he has to sell a house within three days, or otherwise his boss will fire him. Mister Filini comes to him, but he asks the impossible, a house with at least five bathrooms for a few thousand dollars. Incredibly, they find a house, a castle in Transylvania which happens to be own by a count Vlad... Filini doesn't want to buy the castle without seeing it first, so the two of them travel to Transylvania, where they meet the count and his sister, who has a crush on Fracchia and decides to marry him! Meanwhile, the sister of a vampire hunter who was killed by Dracula is seeking to revenge her brother.
Hard and dangerous service. Needed to extinguish fires, but what if there is a fire between the legs?
Funny adventures of a taxi driver and his passenger - broken financial genius.
Two stupid lowlifes are "forced" into a life of violent crime on the streets of Italy. What follows is a mocking takeoff of the American crime classic "Bonnie and Clyde."
Italian comedy in two episodes starring a house painter who emigrated to Switzerland who pretends to be a millionaire and an employee on holiday in Kenya, the victim of catastrophic misadventures.
The world's greatest criminal and the world greatest loser share the same face... now they'll share the same life!
The accountant Arturo De Fanti has problems in the bank because he threatens to be hunted. But he does not import of this troubles, because he hopes to find comfort with his lover.
The innkeeper Mirandolina is a beautiful girl, and for her beauty the Count of Albafiorita and the Marquis of Forlimpopoli fall in love.
The third film in the saga of the unlucky clerk Ugo Fantozzi, played by its creator, Paolo Villaggio.
A lusty young woman decides to use her sexual powers to "tame" the evil and murderous Dr. Jekyll.
The story of a German scientist/stage magician eking out a miserly life in Rio de Janeiro's favelas until getting involved in an improbable kidnapping and ransom plot.
Don Cimbolano - a priest in a small town. Oscar - a offender escaped from prison. Philip - attorney loser. They don't lose heart and find ways out of the most incredible situations.
After many years working abroad, Guido comes back to Milan. His dream is to set up a clock-shop but Italy is much changed while he was abroad. Robbery and bombs are daily events and to go out for a walk in the evening is risky. He succeeds however in setting up his shop only to see it destroyed by gangsters. But he meets a girl who calls herself Mia and he falls for her.
An episodic satire of the political and social status of Italy in the seventies, through the shows of one day of a television channel. An English language lesson turns into a killing of a black dignitary of an embassy by a CIA agent and then into his own killing by another colleague. In a television film, the police are befooled by a fake bomb and put a real one in order not to be derided by the public. In a film inquisition show, the bishop of Naples speaks highly of the importance of the family, but a child who lives a miserable family life kills himself. In the debate that follows it is proposed that they should eat the children, as Swift had said. In the next episode, a general who is in the toilet is called for the NATO parade, but the flasher breaks and in his effort to fix it, he dirts allover and kills himself. In a children's show an inspector finds excuses and delays the arrest of a powerful man...
The frustrating adventures of a humble employee who all the time has to fullfill the wishes and desires of his bosses.
Robbie is a rich and wealthy man who is married to a woman called Magda. One day, they decide to go on holiday. Magda suggests via ferry, despite the fact that Robbie HATES sea travel. He suggests via airplane, but Magda has a fear of heights. During a routine emergency training exercise, Robbie accidentally takes it seriously. That night, a genuine emergency arises, but Robbie thinks it's just a drill. This foolish act leaves Magda no option but to leave the ship alone, making Robbie the only person aboard the ship when it sinks. Upon waking up, Robbie thinks everything is normal, but he soon discovers he is the one remaining person on board the entire ship, which is now at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. He escapes and arrives on a desert island, forced to live á la "Robinson Crusoe". Robbie must now survive until ...
A good-natured but unlucky Italian is constantly going on a difficult situations, but never lose his mood.
Four episodes. A pilot is ready to change sex, but the doctor made an error. A woman is searching a partner for a dance contest. A worker seduce his boss wife. A guard is too much proactive and this will cause many troubles.
A fig tree located in the lands of a baron of the lower Padana has for many centuries been the subject of veneration. The baron, crippled and atheist, one day sees a girl lying on the fig tree in a benevolent attitude and exchanges for the holy venerated by her villagers. Immediately the aristocrat converts and decides to give his belongings to a religious institute. In fact, he was a victim of a cheating and the "santa" is a prostitute who has given up on rage.
A highly stylized surreal farce about the events leading up to Custer's Last Stand anachronistically reenacted in an urban renewal area in modern Paris.
A funny story of count Alfredo aka Didino (little Alfred) and countess Mafalda - his bloodsucking and over-controlling mother.
This movie is an adaptation of a book by Rodari, a famous Italian poet and writer of children literature. A group of children in the outskirts of Rome bump into a spaceship that landed nearby. Soon the event draws the attention of the media, the military and rich entrepreneurs. The spaceship is pointed as the evil to fight against by the authorities, and nobody trusts the kids, who on the other hand try to preserve the spaceship (which is actually a harmless space-cake). –IMDb
The idea of each episode is that of the forbidden dreams at Fracchia-Fantozzi. Paolo Villaggio, sitting at a bar table, is struck by the title of a book or a radio broadcast and begins to imagine himself in the shoes of various characters and in funny situations, always alongside the beautiful Nicoletta Macchiavelli. Back to reality, he orders a martini which he drinks in the company of the actress.
Two brothers-in-law, a smuggler and the other traffic policeman, get hold of a large sum of money, destined for illegal exportation to Switzerland, after the courier is killed in a fire fight with the border police. The owners of the money, which occupy an important social position, try in every way to recover it, also leveraging the weakness of the policeman. After the petty betrayal of his brother-in-law, the smuggler decides to keep all the money and flee to Switzerland.
The idea of each episode is that of the forbidden dreams at Fracchia-Fantozzi. Paolo Villaggio, sitting at a bar table, is struck by the title of a book or a radio broadcast and begins to imagine himself in the shoes of various characters and in funny situations, always alongside the beautiful Nicoletta Macchiavelli. Back to reality, he orders a martini which he drinks in the company of the actress.
In the beginning of the 20th. century Italian actor Guido Guidi, more enthusiastic than talented, and his ensemble tour Texas. The mysterious and obviously rich Peppino Garibaldi gives them an offer, they can’t deny: For a large amount of dough they should play “Richard III.” in the Mexican town Vera Cruz. But Peppino is not really interested in cultural affairs: He supports “La Revolución” and “General” Carasco, who utilizes the feastful premiere of “Richard III.” to raid Vera Cruz for Comandante Zapata. But shortly after the Mexican Army shows up with some canons in tow to sort things out. Guidi and Padre Albino, Italian like him, succeed to flee and save Carasco accidentially from the firing squad. Whereas the latter coninues his revolutionary fight, Guidi and Albino start an odyssey through the struggling Mexico, which lets them fall one time in the hands of Carasco the other time in those of Herrera or even in the clutches of “hand-taking” bandidos.
Released from the orphanage at the age of thirty, a man dreams of finding his mother.
The idea of each episode is that of the forbidden dreams at Fracchia-Fantozzi. Paolo Villaggio, sitting at a bar table, is struck by the title of a book or a radio broadcast and begins to imagine himself in the shoes of various characters and in funny situations, always alongside the beautiful Nicoletta Macchiavelli. Back to reality, he orders a martini which he drinks in the company of the actress.
After saving an infant of royal blood, knight Brancaleone forms a new army and sets out to return the baby to his father: a prince fighting in the Crusades.
Carlo is a successful singer, married to Livia; the two also have a son, Maurizio. Carlo decides to accept a tour in the USA but, shortly before departure, together with his agent Puglisi has a sentimental adventure with two women. Livia, having discovered what had happened, leaves home with Maurizio.
When three drifters come into the possession of stolen gold they are imprisoned then sprung by a friend and tracked by the outlaw Jackson brothers, who originally stole the gold.
An industrialist tries to find an advertising gimmick for his canned meat product "Eat it!". In the fields he finds a savage individual who has reduced himself to two functions only: eating huge amounts of food and making love. So he uses this savage man for his advertising purposes by making the public believe that his meat is an aphrodisiac. Some time later the strange being loses his "gifts". The industrialist tries to replace him, but the incredible amounts of meat he eats turns him into a cow! (Digitmovies)
