Lo sbaglio di essere vivo

Isa Miranda is the beautiful wife of Vittorio de Sica, a poor official, who suddenly dies, and she is inconsolable and organizes a grand funeral with a mass of condolences and pompous circumstances, but the problem is that Vittorio de Sica suddenly wakes up in his coffin before he has been buried. He gets up and also scares the wits out of his inconsolable wife, but what is worse is that his death means a life insurance of 30,000 lire which they simply cannot do without, as his poor job only kept them at basics. So he insists on the funeral being carried through, with him watching, and they collect the money and go for a second honeymoon. But on their journey a former suitor of hers turns up and proposes to her. And that is only the beginning of the complications.

The film has been described as something of a Lubitsch comedy, but here there are some truly sinister ingredients as the problems of the husband being clandestinely alive constantly keep piling up. The film begins with Vittorio de Sica visiting his own grave together with a gravedigger, to whom he confides his entire story and finally asks the gravedigger to solve his problem, since he can't get any job without legal documents. The gravedigger solves the problem.

Having emerged from a cataleptic state, Adriano is content to be thought of as dead so as to collect the insurance money, to which his wife Maria reluctantly agrees. They go off with the proceeds to a mountain resort only to bump into Cesare, who is Adriano's former employer. Thinking on his feet Adriano claims he is the dead man's brother. Matters are further complicated when Cesare who has always loved Maria, proposes marriage........

This delightful piece does not exactly represent a milestone in the careers of Vittorio de Sica, Isa Miranda and Gino Cervi but to watch three such consummate professionals together is a joy.

It is adapted from the play by prolific writer Aldo de Benedetti and directed by Carlo Lodovico Bragaglia, both of whom specialised in comedy and who worked frequently with de Sica. It is good to see Benedetti credited here. Being Jewish, he had endured lean times courtesy of Il Duce's 'racial laws'. He also contributed to the script of what is arguably Cervi's greatest film 'Four steps in the clouds'. Fast forward twenty-five years and de Sica was to depict the dreadful effects of the 'racial laws' in his version of Bassani's 'Il Giardino dei Fitzi-Contini'.

What can one say of the fabulous Signorina Miranda? She chose to return to Italy at the outbreak of WW11, became the brightest star in the firmament of Cinecitta and proved to be a fine actress in the years thereafter.

These three are ably supported by the colourful characterisations of Dina Galli as Cesare's mother and Luigi Almirante as the custodian of the cemetery where Adriano is supposedly buried.

The best and most enduring comedies are not the ones that set out with the intention of causing riotous laughter but those in which the humour arises from the absurdities and ironies of the human condition. This subtle and beautifully performed piece in which characterisations matter more than 'laughs', definitely falls into the latter category and as such can be revisited with pleasure.

Believed dead,a man must pose as his wife's brother but the complications become more more than he bargained for. The plot bears at least a few similarities to Pirandello's "The Late Matthew Pascal". This little gem starring Vittorio De Sica, Isa Miranda, and Gino Cervi has the flavor of a Lubitsch film.