Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street (I Soliti ignoti) featuresa group of good-natured, but utterly incompetent criminals who try to rise above their stationin life by pulling off one big heist, the one that will set them up for life. The entire film is anon-too-subtle satire on both the crime genre, with especially good pokes at Jules Dassin'sheist masterpiece Rififi (1955), which seems to have served as its model, and thespate of Italian neorealist films like The Bicycle Thief that revolutionizedinternational cinema in the postwar years.

Monicelli, a former film critic, has a good feel for both the crime genre and neorealism,which enabled him to make a comedy that plays by the rules of both while simultaneouslysatirizing them. The film's style combines neorealism and film noir (the cinematography isby Gianni de Venanzo, who would go on to shoot Fellini's 8 1/2 and Antonioni'sLa Notte), which immediately establishes a humorously subversive tone.Monicelli sets himself a tricky balancing act--he undermines expectations in the crime genrefor laughs while using the neorealist aesthetic and emphasis on humanity to both underscorethat subversion and to give his film a genuine human face--and he pulls it off wonderfully.

Of course, Monicelli is aided greatly by an incredible cast that brings the story to life. Thefilm's Italian title is I Soliti ignoti, which is a police term that roughly translates tosomething like "the usual suspects." What makes the title ironic and Big Deal onMadonna Street so funny is that the criminals in the movie are hardly "the usualsuspects," except for the fact that they're always being arrested because they're so inept ascriminals and con men.

As with all heist movies, the core of Big Deal on Madonna Street is a big scorethat has to be pulled off with meticulous, intricate planning and preparation. The score hereis a pawn shop on Madonna Street, which is next door to an empty apartment that has a thindividing wall. The first person to find out about it is Cosimo (Memmo Carotenuto), whohears about it in prison after being arrested for trying to steal a car in the opening scene.

Cosimo asks his partner, Capannelle (Carlo Pisacane), to find a scapegoat to do time inprison for him so can get out to pull off the heist. It turns out that finding a scapegoat isharder than Cosimo anticipated, and instead, a gang of would-be and has-been criminals isformed, all of whom don't trust each other, but still want a piece of the pie. These includePeppe (Vittorio Gassman), an inept boxer, Mario (Renato Salvatori), a suave ladies' man,Dante (Totò), a near-senile safecracker, and Tiberio (Marcello Mastroianni), a cameralessphotographer who is stuck taking care of his sleepless one-year-old son because his wife isserving time for smuggling cigarettes.

The running joke through Big Deal on Madonna Street is that these well-meaningcrooks can never get it together enough to pull off the heist--life keeps getting in the way.They keep talking about the need to be "scientific" in their planning, and they go through themotions of designing the heist. Yet, at every turn, something happens to foil their plans, orthey get so sidetracked by something else that they loose focus.

For instance, a major component of the plan is the fact that the apartment they intend to go inthrough is unoccupied. Well, they take so long planning that people eventually move into theapartment. So, they create a backup plan that involves Peppe romancing a young woman(Carla Gravina) who lives there in order to get invited into the apartment at night. Thisnecessarily takes time, and Peppe ends up falling in love with her, which undermines hisability to use her for criminal purposes. Meanwhile, Mario is getting sidetracked with hisown romantic entanglements that involve Carmelina (Claudia Cardinale), the sister ofFerribotte (Tiberio Murgia), one of the gang members who keeps her, quite literally, underlock and key.

The big pay-off, though, is the heist scene itself, which is a comedic gem of mishaps,slapstick bungling, and split-second timing. Monicelli pulls off this sequence brilliantly,allowing it to play out slowly as if it were a serious piece of work, only to throw in onedisaster after another (drilling into a water pipe in the wall is one of the funniest moments,and Woody Allen lifted the gag directly for Small Time Crooks).

The end of Big Deal on Madonna Street is a gentle, sweet reminder that, althoughinept, the characters in the movie are decent human beings who probably deserve better thanthey get. The movie as a whole could have been mean-spirited in its comedy (farces oftenare), but Monicelli instead goes for the same kind of bittersweet human element that madeRififi so good. The two movies could not be more widely different in tone, but inthe end they are both about recognizable human characters who simply get in over theirheads. And, while Rififi features a tragic ending, Big Deal on MadonnaStreet miraculously takes a disaster of a crime and turns it into an opportunity forredemption.

©2001 James Kendrick