Big Deal on Madonna Street (The Criterion Collection)
by Mario Monicelli
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Actor: Carla Gravina, Claudia Cardinale, Marcello Mastroianni, Renato Salvatori, Vittorio GassmanDirector: Mario Monicelli
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Gianni Di Venanzo
Producer: Franco Cristaldi
Writer: Age e Scarpelli
Writer: Suso Cecchi D'Amico
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-06-05
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of Big Deal on Madonna Street (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: We could all afford to be more Italian.
Summary: 4 Stars
Ostensibly a send-up of the French caper classic, "Rififi," "Big Deal on Madonna Street" actually IS a big deal. Personally, I found plenty of humor in the leak-proof, exhilarating predecessor, so the ironic meaning of "Big Deal" seems off the mark if the intention is to mock the childish, self-destructive games of professional jewel thieves. "Madonna" is big in a more literal sense--physical, outrageous comedy that nevertheless manages to distinguish each of its unforgettable characters, balancing slapstick and surprise with humanism and pathos.
A film like this, moreover, could be made only by an Italian, or an Italian-American such as Frank Capra. It's as distant from the Teutonic Hamlet-like brooding of Bergman or the achingly, ceremonial slow pace of Kurosawa or Ozu as you can get. And it makes American comedies and buddy pictures, at least since "Animal House" and "Butch Cassidy," seem like big klutzes by comparison. From Capra to Fellini, Italian cinematic sensibility is essentially positive, upbeat, communal and comic, even if, as Rossellini and de Sica remind us, the social order is subject to the iron-clad materialistic challenges of living (just as the isolated protagonist we find in other national cinema is bound to a code of some noble personal order essential to self-actualization). No cinema--not even Russian--seems more open to Marxist theoretical approaches than Italian (it's Bedford Falls, not George Bailey, that proves the true hero--or antagonist, as the case may be).
There's an additional reason to see this film as more than a send-up, merely, of a predecessor movie. "Big Deal," like "Riffi," has a moral and a message, which comes down to something like "Never give into the machine let alone become one yourself." Like both Chaplin and Keaton, whose best films are also the result of painstaking, meticulous mechanical engineering (both filmmakers go for broke to 1. mechanize the human, as in the famous conveyor belt scene of "Modern Times," and to 2. humanize the mechanical, as in the tarnished but never defeated Confederate locomotive run by Buster). Mario Monicetti emulates the two founding fathers of film comedy in his attention to the details of editing, mis en scene, and acting. And he recalls both the essentially comic vision and communal emphases of his fellow countryman, Frank Capra, in his construction of a little society that is (more or less) functional, "democratic" and, above all, living!
Trust the French to be existential about the inescapable and perennial problem of greed and its empty deserts; the Italians, on the other hand, take it more in stride. No tragic potential here but plenty of misfortune--along with sadness that this vital and vibrant community, even though a dubious lot of thieves, in the end simply can't hold it together. But it's important to note that they retain their "integrity"--they're not about to submit to the indignity of "work" (a cake walk compared to all they've suffered while trying to make their fortunes the "easy," or illicit, way). Like "The Bicycle Thief" they are ultimately out of work, not to mention friends; the difference is that this rag-tag motley crew with a not-so-magnificent obsession is too shielded from the Marxist reality (that seems to occupy the margins of every Italian film) to understand "why" their failed caper should be a big deal. A disappointment, to be sure. Yet the viewer leaves with the feeling that it's all simply another day's work--or, more accurately, play--in the lives of Falstaff and company. It's not Henry V: it's neither the end of Falstaff nor the triumph of the social-economic forces that will eventually lead to his dismissal. But it's a heck of a good time for viewers of any ethnicity, race, class, or gender.
[As the above paragraph suggests, "Big Deal on Madonna Street" demands a sequel. And it gets it 20+ years later, once again featuring Marcello Mastroianni. But if it's a revisionary send-up, or parody, that you're looking for, try De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief" followed immediately by Maurizio Nichetti's "The Icicle Thief"--two films that are a half century and worlds apart yet, upon reflection, offer a comparison that suggests the post-modern milieu of the present is not necessarily superior to the depressed post-World War Italy captured by De Sica's neo-realist classic.]
Description of Big Deal on Madonna Street (The Criterion Collection)
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