Come inguaiammo il cinema italiano. La vera storia di Franco e Ciccio

The radical anarchist film-making duo Daniele Ciprì and Franco Maresco pay homage in this documentary annex film essay to the Sicilian actor-duo Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia. Franco and Ciccio once started as street artists in Palermo, but became increasingly popular, first in the theatre and on television, later in films. With his vaudeville background and physical humour, the style of Franco can best be compared with Jerry Lewis. Between 1964 and 1968, Franco and Ciccio played the lead in no less than 38 films, most by Lucio Fulci, a Mario Bava film and War, Italian Style, in which we can see an aged Buster Keaton. Later they worked with more artistic directors such as Fellini, the Tavianis and Pasolini, but they did not shun more vulgar and commercial excursions, as can be seen by Franco’s leading role in a hilarious parody of Last Tango in Paris. Altogether, the couple made more than 100 films. But, as so often happens in marriages and comic duos, in the end there was so much quarrelling that a break was inevitable. In this film, Ciprì and Maresco present a loving ode to their funny fellow islanders. They have chosen the funniest and most important fragments from a mountain of archive material and used it to make a clever and entertaining portrait of the career of a duo that extended over the greater part of the previous century. (EH)