I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) (1958)

June 30, 1958, release date

Directed by Mario Monicelli

Screenplay by Age-Scarpelli, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Mario Monicelli

Based on a story by Age-Scarpelli

Music by Piero Umiliani

Edited by Adriana Novelli

Cinematography by Gianni di Venanzo

Vittorio Gassman as Peppe

Renato Salvatori as Mario Angeletti

Memmo Carotenuto as Cosimo

Rossana Rory as Norma

Carla Gravina as Nicoletta

Claudia Cardinale as Carmela Ferribotte

Carlo Pisacane as Capannelle

Tiberio Murgia as Michele Ferribotte

Gina Rovere as Teresa

Gina Amendola as Nerina

Marcello Mastroianni as Tiberio

Totò as Dante Cruciani

Distributed by Lux Film

Big Deal on Madonna Street is a charming film noir: a heist film with a lot of humor and the most likable burglars. They are living in postwar Rome, struggling to get by in uncertain times. They bungle almost everything they plan together, however, like young boys who don’t know any better and are probably not the best influences on each other. With all the good humor and camaraderie, it’s difficult to find any angst in this film. The jazz score by the composer Piero Umiliani keeps the mood light, too.

The film opens with a nighttime city street scene. As the credits roll and the wonderful jazz score plays, two men (Capannelle and Cosimo) walk down the sidewalk and away from the camera. Cosimo keeps looking over his shoulder: He is waiting for the right moment to steal a car while Capannelle acts as a lookout. Cosimo finds his chance, but he botches the job by accidentally turning on the car’s horn, which he cannot turn off. The jazz horn from the film’s score blends into the sound of the car’s horn, and then the sound of the car’s horn blends into the sound of a police siren. The two arriving police officers size up the situation and start a foot chase. Cosimo gets out of the car and gets his coat stuck in the car door, making it easy for the officers to catch up with him. This first sequence in the film sets up humorous expectations for viewers about the main characters at the outset.

(This blog post about Big Deal on Madonna Street contains spoilers.)

While in prison for auto theft, Cosimo learns about what he thinks will be an easy heist of a pawnshop on Madonna Street. A series of double dealings result in others learning of the plot and taking it over from him. Cosimo is forced into petty crime, which leads to the one point in the plot without humor: Cosimo is run over by a streetcar when he runs in front of it after trying to steal a woman’s purse.

The remaining friends (Peppe, Capannelle, Michele Ferribotte, and Tiberio) continue with their plans to break into the pawnshop on Madonna Street. Anything and everything thwart the group’s planned heist. They break down the wrong wall: They’ve gone from the dining room to the kitchen in the same apartment, not to the pawnshop next door. They become distracted and start eating the food, including the pasta and beans, left behind in the apartment. Capannelle accidentally sets off a small explosion because the others nicked the gas pipe. All of them live their lives at the whim of fate and at the mercy of their good-natured ineptitude. But audiences at the time might have found it especially easy to identify with them: Many of the scenes in Rome show the effects of war in the background, and everyone at the time probably had to make do with what they could find.

Events go well for these friends only when they give in and accept the circumstances that fate hands to them, which usually involves falling in love when they didn’t expect it or landing a job they didn’t realize was available. Big Deal on Madonna Street ends with a shot of a newspaper article with the following headline:

I SOLITI IGNOTI

Col sistema del buco rubano pasta e ceci

PERSONS UNKNOWN

Bore a hole to steal pasta and beans

The police are still investigating a strange burglary from last night. A group of thieves broke into an apartment in Via delle Madonna, through a window overlooking the . . . .

Almost sixty years after the release of Big Deal on Madonna Street, I read this newspaper excerpt on the screen secretly hoping that the group of friends were never found by the police and could continue with their lives, happy and prosperous. My guess is that the director Mario Monicelli felt the same way, too.

According to Wikipedia, two sequels to Big Deal on Madonna Street were released. Audace colpo dei soliti ignoti (released in English as Hold-up à la Milanaise) was released in 1960; it was directed by Nanni Loy. Another sequel, I soliti ignoti vent’anni dopo, was released in 1987; it was directed by Amanzio Todin. The latter was released on DVD in the United States as Big Deal on Madonna Street—20 Years Later. Two remakes of the film were shot in the United States: the 1984 film Crackers directed by Louis Malle, and the 2002 film Welcome to Collinwood, directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo.

I guess these sequels and remakes are a testament to the success of the original. I haven’t seen them, but I wonder if they can recapture the bonhomie of the original because Big Deal on Madonna Street really is charming.

Silver City (2004)

May 13, 2004 (Cannes Film Festival), September 17, 2004 (United States), release dates

Directed by John Sayles

Screenplay by John Sayles

Music by Mason Daring

Edited by John Sayles

Cinematography by Haskell Wexler

Danny Huston as Danny O’Brien

Chris Cooper as Richard “Dicky” Pilager

Richard Dreyfuss as Chuck Raven

Kris Kristofferson as Wes Benteen

Maria Bello as Nora Allardyce

Mary Kay Place as Grace Seymour

David Clennon as Morton “Mort” Seymour

Tim Roth as Mitch Paine

Michael Murphy as Senator Judson Pilager

Daryl Hannah as Madeline “Maddy” Pilager

Sal Lopez as Tony Guerra

Luis Saguar as Vince Esparza

Alma Delfina as Lupe Montoya

Miguel Ferrer as Cliff Castleton

Ralph Waite as Casey Lyle

James Gammon as Sheriff Joe Skaggs

Billy Zane as Chandler Tyson

Thora Birch as Karen Cross

Charles Mitchell as Henry

Distributed by Newmarket Films

Produced by Anarchist’s Convention Films

John Sayles’s movies are among my favorites, and the more often I see Silver City, the more I like it. Silver City qualifies as a neo-noir in many ways—not because of the cinematography, however: Very little of the film is filmed at night or in shadowy locations. But it starts with the discovery of a dead body, and before long, Danny O’Brien, a private investigator, is uncovering political corruption, migrant trafficking, and violence. Silver City is a combination political commentary, murder mystery, and neo-noir.

Chuck Raven, the campaign manager for Dicky Pilager (supposedly based on George W. Bush) hires Danny O’Brien to harass anyone who holds a grudge against Pilager because Pilager hooks a dead body in Arapahoe Lake during the filming of a political ad about the environment. O’Brien starts to probe more deeply into the death than Raven would like, and O’Brien eventually invites more trouble—serious trouble—for himself and others because of the information that he uncovers.

(This blog post about Silver City contains spoilers.)

Most of the plot revolves around greed. The Pilagers and Wes Benteen, a Colorado corporate business owner, manipulate everything and everyone for their own economic and political gain. Wes Benteen doesn’t have much screen time, but his ambition and greed are referred to so often by other characters that his presence is almost inescapable. Fear and confusion are predominant emotions because those with economic and political power benefit from others’ fear and confusion, which in turn, of course, creates an atmosphere of angst throughout. The voters and ordinary people (citizens and noncitizens) are betrayed here, although personal betrayal is not a central theme in Silver City.

Danny O’Brien is a victim of fate for most of the film. He is almost completely alone in the world, and he is downtrodden since losing a job as a reporter, an event that happens before the start of Silver City. He has let others and events shape his life from that point on. He slowly comes to realize, however, that he can at least take responsibility where he can and then move forward.

For me, expert—and corrupt—business and political maneuvering wins in Silver City. Although there seems to be a clear distinction between good and evil characters in this film, Danny O’Brien and many of the supporting characters follow a trajectory that shows how they change, either throughout the film or as a result of past events that they reveal in dialogue. One character who seems hostile at first turns out to have the interests of people who can’t defend themselves in mind, and this person protects them as best as is reasonably possible under the circumstances. This character doesn’t change all that much; it is viewers’ perceptions of him that change.

The DVD comes with commentary by John Sayles (writer, director, editor) and Maggie Renzi (producer). Here are a few of what I thought were their most memorable points about Silver City:

• Renzi found reason to be positive about the film’s ending because Pilager was back at Arapahoe Lake filming another political ad, and the cameras are rolling when another disaster strikes. (I found the film’s ending bleak, maybe not on a personal level for some of the main characters but certainly on the grand stage of politics and big business. Renzi’s interpretation doesn’t work for me, but if I hadn’t heard her comments, I would never have considered an optimistic interpretation. And, of course, a bleak ending is more in keeping with noir tradition.)

• Sayles talks about emphasizing colors like brown, green, and blue found in Colorado’s environment. (These details grounded the film in its on-location setting, but they didn’t amount to “noir” for me.)

• Danny O’Brien’s black clothes represented his outsider status and alienation in a city where most people wear athletic gear and Western wear. (O’Brien’s clothes didn’t stand out or mark his character in any way for me, but his downtrodden isolation was evident.)

• Renzi calls Maddy Pilager “a real Raymond Chandler” character because she is the “crazy sister.” (I thought of Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep by Chandler.) In the jail scene, when Danny O’Brien discusses the case with Sheriff Skaggs, the film is “in Raymond Chandler territory again”: The detective doesn’t save everybody, and he is forced to concede that there is only so much he can do with the information he has learned through his investigation. But through his experience in Silver City, Danny regains his sense of outrage, and thus he is back in the game.

If you have the chance to listen to Sayles’s and Renzi’s audio commentary, I recommend it. They offer several opportunities to think about the film on many levels, which makes sense because Silver City works as political commentary, a murder mystery, and a wonderful neo-noir.

Pushover (1954)

July 30, 1954, release date

Directed by Richard Quine

Screenplay by Roy Huggins

Based on the novels The Night Watch by Thomas Walsh and Rafferty by Bill S. Ballinger

Music by Arthur Morton

Edited by Jerome Thoms

Cinematography by Lester White

Fred MacMurray as Paul Sheridan

Philip Carey as Rick McAllister

Kim Novak as Lona McLane

Dorothy Malone as Ann Stewart

E. G. Marshall as Lieutenant Carl Eckstrom

Allen Nourse as Paddy Dolan

Phil Chambers as Briggs

Alan Dexter as Fine

Robert Stevenson as Billings

Don C. Harvey as Peters

Paul Richards as Harry Wheeler

Ann Morriss as Ellen Burnett

Distributed by Columbia Pictures

Pushover opens with a bank heist, and the setup of the opening sequence reminds me of the opening sequences in The Friends of Eddie Coyle and The Town. In Pushover, the opening credits appear while one of the robbers sits down inside the bank with his gun ready to guard the bank door. As the employees enter the bank to start their workday, they become hostages. The bank manager and one other employee are forced to open the bank’s vault for two of the thieves. The bank security guard goes for one of the thieves who is holding the remaining employees at gunpoint, and the guard is shot and killed by a thief coming out of the bank vault.

(This blog post about Pushover contains spoilers.)

The plot then switches to a seemingly unrelated plot thread that viewers don’t yet realize is related, which again is very similar to The Friends of Eddie Coyle and The Town. Viewers see a woman, Lona McLane, coming out of a movie theater alone. She walks to her parked car, which won’t start. Paul Sheridan appears to offer assistance. Lona (and viewers) don’t know yet that Paul Sheridan is one of the detectives assigned to stake out Lona on the assumption that her boyfriend, Harry Wheeler, now identified as one of the bank robbers, will be back to see her—and will have the money from the heist with him. Paul falls for Lona, and they plot to keep the money for themselves.

I have a lot of trouble believing there was any chemistry between Paul Sheridan (played by Fred MacMurray) and Lona (Kim Novak). Maybe it’s just me: I can’t imagine that someone like Lona would fall for Fred MacMurray. I can’t get past the actor in this role. Such an obstacle is a bit of a liability in a film that bases the detective’s downfall on the passion between the two leads. It just didn’t work for me, but that may not be true for other viewers. It’s hardly a reason not to recommend the film. I really enjoyed the story. The way that Pushover depicts how one police detective slides into corruption is an interesting take on a familiar noir story.

Another plot point bothered me a bit. Several detectives work shifts in the stakeout of Lona’s apartment. One of the detectives, Rick McAllister, imagines that he is falling in love with one of Lona’s neighbors, a woman he isn’t supposed to be watching—but he is. He does meet this neighbor in the apartment hallway one day, when she is being harassed by a man her roommate knows. The harasser takes her purse and won’t give it back unless she agrees to go out for a drink with him. McAllister hears her protests and intervenes, convincing the man—with an arm twist and a shove—to beat it. The woman, Ann Stewart, introduces herself and admires McAllister’s technique; she wonders aloud if she could learn it herself. McAllister tells her that it would be better to avoid that type in the first place.

McAllister is a detective: He should know that Stewart—that no one—has clairvoyant powers into the depths of other people’s characters. But it’s 1954 and blaming the victim, especially a female victim, may have been even more common in 1954 than it is today. It turns out, however, that McAllister’s own powers of observation fail him: One of the detectives working with him, Paul Sheridan, is scheming to steal the bank money for himself and Lona, the bank robber’s girlfriend. Pushover doesn’t make too much of this as a theme, but I noticed it.

Again, my reservations about Fred MacMurray and about the unaddressed theme described above do not prevent me from recommending the film. As I said, I really enjoyed the story. And the plot twists (Can Lona McLane trust Paul Sheridan? Is Lona the quintessential femme fatale?) held my interest enough that I saw the film twice. But I do wish Paul Sheridan had been played by another actor.