Both a Peter Sellers crime caper comedy and a De Sica parody of Italian film

netwallah

This movie is two good things at the same time—first, it's a Peter Sellers comedy, which is wonderful enough in itself. Here he plays an Italian master criminal, with full Italian cinema schtick, first as a gangster, and then as a director. He conceives a scheme to smuggle gold stolen in Egypt by the befezzed Egyptian Okra (Akim Tamiroff, ready to play any sort of foreigner), under the cover of making a movie. To do so, he steals the production equipment from Vittorio de Sica, playing himself—as Moses walks into the desert, he cries, "More sand! More sand in the desert!" And then the production, in a tiny coastal village, is a breathtaking parody of neorealism, with all the villagers clamouring to play parts, the vagueness and phony existentialism of the director's posturing, and the cheekbones of the starstruck police chief (Lando Buzzanca). At the trial—because of course things go wrong—the prosecutor shows grotesque black & white footage, and a film critic leaps to his feet applauding, and is carried out of the courtroom crying out that it is a work of primitive genius. The story is by Neil Simon, the star turn is by Peter Sellers, but the parody is pure de Sica. And it startled me; I had no idea!

score 10/10

netwallah 29 January 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1277802/