Toto'	The teacher Semprini
Vittorio De Sica	Lawyer Mazzoni Baralla
Antonio Cifariello	Otello
Maurizio Arena	Mario
Giancarlo Costa	Spartaco
Franco Fabrizi	Alvaro
Giovanna Ralli	Marcella
Mario Carotenuto	Commendatore
Maria Pia Casilio	Anita
Eloisa Cianni	Iris
Silvana Pampanini	Maria
Margherita Autuori
Nando Bruno
Anita Durante
Aldo Giuffré
Turi Pandolfini
Mario Riva

The kitty’s short because the job is scarce and there is a little imagination to invent it. Three Roman boys, Otello, Mario and Spartaco would like to acquire a pickup truck very much, to improve their uncomfortable economic conditions. But the naive trio run into a smart individual named Alvaro, that recommends them small expedients. From the profiteering of tickets to the fraud against a lawyer, up to the blackmail to some clandestine lovers caught in the act. And in their small plots of inexperienced cheats, also a certain teacher remains envolved,, to whom they would sell a fake. But the things don’t go in the best way: and the three spends a night in the cooler too. At the end they all will start seriously to work.

CRITIQUE

Inspiring to some of Alberto Moravia’s Roman stories chosen by Sergio Amidei (Il biglietto falso, Il godi godi, Arrivederci, Il terrore di Roma, Il bassetto, La parola mamma, La voglia di vino and Prepotenti per forza) and adapted, apart by them, also by Age, Scarpelli and Francesco Rosi, the film tries to let cohabit the writer’s pessimism with the kindness of the Italian comedy: a curious hybrid comes out from there, vitalized - perhaps too much - by a bright cast, that testifies the rising temptation of the Italian cinema to dissolve in the pink certain components of more serious social analysis. The duet between the teacher Semprini (Totò) and the lawyer Mazzoni Baralla (De Sica) on the intolerability of the word mama is beautiful. Special mention in the large female cast for the impetuous and wrathful fishmonger played by Giovanna Ralli. (P. Mereghetti “Dizionario dei film 1998”, translated by Alice Castoldi)