page_title: Big Deal on Madonna Street
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Big Deal on Madonna Street / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: I soliti ignoti filming site
context_page_description: Big Deal on Madonna Street is a 1958 Italian comedy caper film directed by Mario Monicelli and considered to be among the masterpieces of Italian cinema. Its original Italian title literally translates as “the usual unknown ones, ” which is roughly equivalent to the English phrase “the usual suspects.” The name of the Roman street in the English title is a slight mistranslation, as the Italian name of the fictional Roman street on which the midnight burglary in the film takes place is the Via delle Madonne rather than “Madonna Street.” Compounding the confusion is the fact that the real Roman street on which the scene was filmed is the Via delle tre cannelle rather than the Via delle tre Madonne.
  The film is a comedy about a group of small-time thieves and ne'er-do-wells who bungle an attempt to burgle a pawn shop in Rome. The five hapless would-be burglars are played by Vittorio Gassman, Renato Salvatori, Carlo Pisacane, Tiberio Murgia and Marcello Mastroianni. The careers of both Gassman and Mastroianni were considerably helped by the success of the film, Gassman in particular, since before then he was not deemed suitable for comedic roles.
context_section_description: According to director Mario Monicelli, while the film was intended as a parody of neorealism, "by then neorealism was already a thing of the past, something that was surpassed. It was more a parody that was aligned with a certain realism around us, with the poverty, and with people who had to do the best they could with whatever means possible to survive, with petty crimes. ...They are people without education or strong family support who are only attempting to survive. All my films have this type of theme or idea."
  Asked if it was also a parody of Jules Dassin's film Rififi, Monicelli said, "Yes because we saw this as a film shot in a very harsh, realist style. Very scientific, as the Peppe character continually says. So we wanted to do the same thing, but the characters didn't have the means. The way they worked was quite the contrary actually."
  Monicelli and cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo agreed on a photographic tone that was not comedic or brightly lit. "On the contrary," Monicelli said, "harsh and dramatic, because the film has a dramatic side in that it is about poor people. We also have the death of Cosimo, and his funeral. So it's a comedy but with death. Which was something new at the time. It was rare to find death and failure in a comedy. I had difficulty making the film because the producers didn’t want me to make it this way. With Vittorio Gassman who wasn’t a comedian, with the film ending in failure, and with the death of a central character. All this made it difficult. But Di Venanzo understood the tone. To make people laugh with a story that was dramatic rather than comic. But seen with a comic eye."
  The film was shot in ten weeks on locations throughout Rome. "Even most of the interiors were on location," Monicelli said. "The only interior that was shot in a studio was the wall that gets broken into at the end because I couldn’t break a wall in an actual apartment! But all the other interiors were shot on location. Which of course was a particular trait of Italian cinema, to shoot on location. Especially in those days, although that tendency remains even in contemporary Italian cinema...There were not that many cars and little traffic. Italy was a poor country. People walked or took what little public transport there was, especially in the city peripherals. In the city centers of course it was a little busier, but still not heavy in traffic. Italy was a country not far removed from the war, with much visible destruction. That was the reality."
  According to Monicelli, the film adhered to the script, without improvisations. "I don’t do improvising," he said. "I don't know how. I like to know everything in advance and spend a long time in preparation."
  Dialogue, as was customary in Italian cinema, was all post-dubbed. Monicelli explained, "First of all because in Italy we often shoot with actors who are not professional. For example the guy who plays the Sicilian, the jealous brother Ferribotte, was not an actor. He was a dishwasher in a restaurant I would frequent. The guy who plays Capannelle, the sporty guy, wasn’t an actor either. I think he was a bricklayer. Of course [Claudia] Cardinale wasn’t an actress then either. But this way of shooting films was quite common in Italy, to use actors taken from the street. So because they didn’t know how to recite their lines they had to be dubbed. On the other hand, you know that in Italy we speak many different dialects. So, for example, the actor who plays the Sicilian was not Sicilian. He was neither an actor, or a Sicilian! So I had to have a Sicilian dub his voice. Another one of the actors who was supposed to be Bolognesian (from Bologna) was from Naples, so I had to dub his voice. Cardinale spoke French so I had to dub her voice into Sicilian."
  The apartment and pawnshop on "Via della Madonna" was in reality located at 7–8, Via delle Tre Cannelle (41.896613°N 12.486°E), immediately north of Trajan's Market. The building is still standing as of 2019.
caption: The building depicted in the film, photographed in 2019
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