Totò, the prince of laughter whom the progressive elite did not like

‘A crude farce shouted out in Neapolitan dialect from the first scene to the last […]. It is variety theatre and slapstick of the worst kind; nor does the presence of fine actors such as Totò and Peppino De Filippo make itself felt, at least in terms of good acting’ (Vice, Avanti!, 9 September 1956). “It’s absolutely true,” admitted another critic, “that with Totò and Peppino you always have a laugh. Even if the plot is as lacking in imagination, originality and taste as this one. One cannot help but think, with regret, of the terrible way the screenwriters and the director make use of these two of our finest comic actors […]”. The newspaper that published this review on 10 September 1956, La Notte, could certainly not be described as left-wing, yet it felt the need to warn the middle-class audience it catered to against the caricature-like nature and vulgarity of Nicola Manzari’s screenplay.

Released on the eve of Ferragosto seventy years ago in Italian cinemas, where it sold almost four and a half million tickets, Camillo Mastrocinque’s film Totò, Peppino e la... malafemmina went on to become an icon. As Filippo Mazzarella wrote (Corriere della Sera, 14 August 2026), the film is not only one of the Neapolitan comedian’s most sensational performances, but certainly the finest of those from his memorable collaboration with Peppino De Filippo. It is one of the masterpieces of 1950s Italian cinema: a film that has transcended its own era to become a true part of the nation’s popular cultural heritage, so much so that even today many of its lines and gags continue to be quoted, imitated and passed down through the generations.

The story is well known. The brothers Antonio and Peppino Caponi (Totò and Peppino), landowners in a small village in Campania who torment their wealthy neighbour Mezzacapa (Mario Castellani) with pranks, discover that their nephew Gianni (Teddy Reno) – the son of the widow Lucia (Vittoria Crispo), who had moved to Milan to study medicine – has fallen in love with Marisa (Dorian Gray), a variety show performer. Giulietta (Luisa Ciampi), the cross-eyed daughter of Gianni’s landlords, is secretly in love with him and, out of jealousy, writes to Lucia exposing the young man’s relationship and claiming that he is neglecting his studies. Convinced that the girl could jeopardise their nephew’s future, Antonio, Peppino and Lucia plan to travel to Milan to find him. After reluctantly seeking advice from the detested Mezzacapa, they travel north and set out in search of Gianni in an attempt to bring him back to Naples and persuade Marisa to end the relationship, even going so far as to offer her a sum of money on condition that she steps aside. However, Lucia ultimately recognises the sincerity of the young couple’s feelings and the girl’s honesty, and eventually accepts their union.

Whilst the film’s success was primarily down to the extraordinary chemistry between Totò and Peppino De Filippo, their virtuosity and their perfect timing, its trump card was, however, the hilarious portrayal of the contrast between north and south, between rural life and urban reality, which in post-war Italy could only be depicted through images by the cinema. Antonio and Peppino “approached Milan, in fact, like explorers catapulted into an unknown universe, unable to grasp its social and linguistic codes: and their sense of disorientation became, for the director Camillo Mastrocinque, a lens through which to observe, with irony, an Italy in the midst of transformation, suspended between tradition and modernity on the eve of the economic boom, when the cities were growing rapidly and the cultural differences between the north and the south were beginning to clash more forcefully” (Mazzarella).

The film captures this historic moment by drawing on the devices of farce and commedia dell’arte. There are countless scenes that have left an indelible mark: from their arrival at Milan Central Station decked out as Cossacks, to their request for information from the ‘ghisa’ (mistaken for a German but then addressed in an improbable Franco-Macaronic dialect: ‘Nòio…volevòn savuàr…l’indiriss…’), right up to the famous sequence of the letter dictated to Peppino, probably one of the most famous moments in the history of Italian comedy (later revisited by Troisi and Benigni in "Non ci resta che piangere"). With its language constantly distorted by the pair’s semi-illiteracy, thrown into disarray by an irresistible game of nonsense made up of open-ended asides, punctuation spoken aloud, exaggerated polite phrases and constant changes of mind, it is a scene that perfectly encapsulates Totò’s linguistic talent, capable of transforming Italian into something unpredictable, but also – as Peppino himself often admitted – a complicity underpinned by a shared desire for improvisation.

Viewed today, the film continues to pulsate with the affection with which it regarded a working-class Italy destined to change rapidly: whilst Antonio and Peppino belonged to an archaic world of family values, patriarchal authority and mistrust of modernity, their journey symbolically represented the meeting of two eras. Even the character of the so-called ‘malafemmina’ revealed an unexpected complexity: by dismantling the image constructed by the two brothers – the result of prejudice and ignorance – she was in fact revealed to be an already modern and independent figure, a victim of provincial moral conventions, pointing the way to a light-hearted refutation of a mindset that was still deeply conservative.

But why, despite its exceptional success at the box office, was the film panned by the critics upon its release? Perhaps precisely because of that success, given that the entire official cultural establishment – and especially the refined culture celebrated by Giovanni Spadolini in his essay Italia di minoranza (1983) – harboured a barely concealed contempt for Antonio De Curtis, a contempt made all the more irksome by the forced acknowledgement of his undeniable talent as an actor. “It is truly painful to note,” as one could read in La Voce Repubblicana on 14 November 1954, “how the humour in certain Italian films is still tied to outdated formulas belonging to the most lowbrow variety theatre.” It is rather striking to learn that this depressing film was none other than Il medico dei pazzi, a gem of Neapolitan farce written by the great Edoardo Scarpetta in 1908 and adapted for the screen by Mario Mattoli.

But perhaps the harshest criticism is to be found in the party newspaper that ought to have been closest to and most attuned to popular tastes: L’Unità. In his review of Totò, Eva e il pennello proibito (15 February 1959), a melancholic Ugo Casiraghi lamented: “The audience are not lucky; let’s be fair, they are forced to swallow productions so shabbily cobbled together, so devoid of spirit and any glimmer of human intellect.” Of course, seven years earlier, the director Steno had produced a film of far greater substance, “Totò a colori”. Yet the refrain remained the same, as relentless as a cleaver: Totò, a great actor who could not find directors capable of showcasing his extraordinary artistic qualities. A claim that did not hold water, considering that he was directed by filmmakers such as Luigi Comencini, Mario Monicelli, Alessandro Blasetti, Luigi Zampa, Vittorio De Sica, Alberto Lattuada and Dino Risi.

Following his death (1967), the reappraisal of Totò took on an apologetic tone, as if to make amends for the injustices and humiliations long inflicted upon him in the past. Cultural figures who had previously despised him the most have even gone so far as to regard him as ‘ahead of his time’ compared to Charlie Chaplin and certainly worthy of being placed alongside Buster Keaton. As is often the case, in seeking to atone for one excess, one falls into the opposite extreme. The author of Modern Times, it must be said in no uncertain terms, has been remembered as one of the intellectual leading figures of the twentieth century. His creative genius was incomparable to that of Totò, and his universal language – which transcended all ethnic and cultural boundaries – was able to translate the profound crisis of the ‘short century’ into formidable comic inventions, ranging from the inhumanity of the assembly line to the blind lust for power of Nazi-Fascism. And yet even the ‘prince of laughter’ was representative of a deeply rooted Italy, ‘Catholic’ in a sense not necessarily religious, characterised by vices and virtues which, whilst constituting an obstacle to the process of secularisation, to some extent tempered social conflicts. From "Siamo uomini o caporali" (1955) to Camillo Mastrocinque’s "La banda degli onesti" (1956), not to mention Monicelli’s "Guardie e ladri" (1951), Totò embodies the ‘subject’ who tries to carve out a very modest space in which to live, without ever being taken seriously by those in power, by the ‘corporals’ of the moment.

Totò’s Italy was undoubtedly ‘backward’, just as the Italy of Giovannino Guareschi, Don Camillo and Peppone was backward. Yet, on closer inspection, there was a liberal streak in the ‘subject’: the clear realisation that it is not laws that shape customs, but customs that shape laws. It is not true that in the characters he portrayed – straddling the line between the petty bourgeoisie and the underclass – ‘there is only fatalism and resignation in the face of the violence and arbitrariness of those in power’ (Dino Cofrancesco, ‘Ascoltare Grillo e rimpiangere Totò’, l’Occidentale, 14 September 2007). Totò pillories those who dispose of others’ lives out of a delusion of omnipotence. In several of his films, such as Fernando Cerchio’s Totò contro Maciste (1962), he – a right-wing man who declares he votes for Achille Lauro – masterfully mocks Mussolini’s tone of voice and rhetorical style as he harangues the crowds from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia. Nevertheless, he could not have been to the liking of the educated and progressive elites, as he remained on the sidelines, neither ‘participating’ nor placing himself at the service of any particular cause.

An attitude that more than one person has described as ‘anarchic’, others as ‘indifferent’, but which reflected a critical view of reality. In this dialectic with the present, in this problematic confrontation with traditional morality and social conventions – embodied, in turn, by the corporal on duty – Totò lays bare his antagonist and reveals what lies behind the various forms of authority. This aspect of Totò’s art and persona represents – and it is no heresy to say so – ‘a point of convergence with what was the quest of neorealist cinema’ (Pasquale Iaccio, ‘Totò: author and experimenter in post-war Italian cinema’, in ‘Drammaturgia’, 9 February 2023). The perspective and narrative techniques may change, but not the substance of the message intended for the viewer. The much-maligned comic cinema of the ‘ham’ Totò is, in fact, no less effective than the works of his contemporary masters of neorealist cinema in denouncing authoritarianism and the distortions of power. The difference is that, unlike the latter, Totò’s works reached a mass audience and found their way to the vast audiences in the country’s suburbs.

Incidentally, these films enabled Italian producers to compete with the American film industry. It was thanks to two major successes in 1949 (by Dino De Laurentiis with "I pompieri di Viggiù", and by Carlo Ponti with "L’imperatore di Capri" and "Totò cerca casa") that the two young producers left Lux, joining forces to found Ponti-De Laurentiis in 1950. They soon entrusted the production of Totò’s films to a specially created company, Rosa Film, and then, in 1951, took over Humanitas Film, which held a lucrative contract with the actor, thereby securing an almost complete monopoly over his work for several years. In the early 1950s, the proceeds from his films contributed to the development of the entire Italian film industry, making him a sort of goose that laid golden eggs.

The author was born in 1944 and therefore belongs to the generation that grew up on bread and Totò. It was only later that he discovered that, as early as the 1920s, Totò had been described as a ‘one-of-a-kind comedian’ – just as Fascism was establishing itself as the ‘single party’. And that even back then, he was defying the regime’s censorship with one of his jokes: ‘Ah, if only Galivoi would return!’ - Galivoi? - Yes, don’t you know? The formal ‘lei’ form of address had been abolished. The censors decided not to intervene, believing that a touch of magnanimity would foster consensus. Whilst they became more vigilant and strict from 1939 onwards, they were powerless when – after the liberation of Rome – Salomè-Magnani (the people) and Pinocchio-Totò (the Duce) sang a duet on the stage of the Ambra Jovinelli theatre to the tune of ‘Se mi volessi bene veramente’, mocking a toy-like country manipulated by a bunch of foolish puppets.

This was Antonio Griffo Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno Porphyrogenitus Gagliardi De Curtis of Byzantium. An aristocratic commoner or a commoner of aristocratic stock; if – as Emilio Gentile wrote – one wishes to attach an ‘-ism’ to him, ‘Qoheletism’ would be appropriate, that is, a follower of the biblical sage Qohelet, he who says: ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Everything depends on fate and chance. The fate of the sons of men and of beasts is one and the same: death’ (E. Gentile, Caporali tanti, uomini pochissimi. La storia secondo Totò, Laterza, 2022).