There's Room Up Ahead

Aldo Fabrizi takes money and tickets on a Roman tram. One afternoon, wan Adriana Benetti announces she has been robbed of 500 lire she was bringing to the landlord from her employers. Fabrizi takes her to the police, but the money is gone. He takes her to her home, her employers are horrors. He takes her to his room so she can sleep, his landlady thinks the worst, so they spend the night in the train station. Then it's try to find her a job to no avail, back to work to be hounded by his boss, and after a couple of weeks of this, he realizes he wants to marry her. He doesn't know that his friend from work, handsome Andrea Checchi thinks she has already slept with Fabrizi, so why not him?

Fabrizi is excellent, as a kindly person who finds the world a burden, and Checchi is good in a role with not much depth. Signorina Benetti is given little to do except to look put upon and bewildered. There are some good supporting roles, particularly Carlo Micheluzzi as a chaotically jovial first-time father who insists that Fabrizi and signorina Benetti be the godparents, and this being 1942, there's an uplifting, patriotic ending with soldiers marching off to war, or at least Naples. Given the story, it's a pleasant, competent comedy-drama that you suspect will end with a "nobody loves a fat man" ending, but not not much more: the sort of good movie you expect a vigorous production company to turn out four of every month. What makes it of interest to movie fans, is that among all the credits, the story is attributed to "A. Fabrizi and Federico". That first name makes sense. It is, after all, a vehicle for its star. Federico, however, is the first writing credit for a fellow named Fellini.