There were a hundred and more Totò comedies on film from 1937 to 1967. Many are worth watching just for the sake of Totò's performance, for he really was one of the greatest clowns in movie history. Yet Italian comic cinema in the post-war years is more than just a collection of funny guys. It's a brand of comedy with a lot, a lot of things in it, and when you start digging under and around the jokes, you suddenly realize what a miracle it was. There are basically two epochs in postwar Italian comic cinema : epoch I, the immediate postwar years, whose protagonists are Totò, Macario, Eduardo & Peppino De Filippo, Renato Rascel, Carlo Campanini; epoch II is the invention of a new comedy genre, commedia all'italiana, which finds its first "complete" expression in 1958 with the Monicelli classic 'I soliti ignoti' (in which Totò also holds a supporting role).
Commedia all'italiana (1958-1978) was so powerful that it is an understandable temptation to read the first wave of Italian comedies (1945-196?) only as a vast prelude for the second wave. But that would be a mistake, because in the domaine of comedy things don't happen orderly, with a preconceived plan, like the way intellectuals would like to have it : on the contrary, when director Monicelli, screenwriters Age-Scarpelli, actors Gassman, Mastroianni and Totò did 'I soliti ignoti' (Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958), they never thought about inventing a new comedy genre, even though this is what they were doing. They were only doing whatever they could to entertain their (immense) public, and all of a sudden they struck gold. These things happen by chance, by luck, by random, which is why I call it a miracle.
'La Banda degli onesti' (1955) is a true peak, a summum of the first era of Italian comedy. It is an hilarious farce, full of funny details, crazy situations,mad-hatter characterizations, one-liners to die for. Totò is the central funny guy, but his accomplices don't let him steal the show : Peppino de Filippo for one, another titan of comedy, is irresistible; and as usual, chunky secondary characters abound. Comedy is all about timing and the timing here is flawless, thanks to the perfect Age-Scarpelli screenplay. Veteran comedy director Camillo Mastrocinque knew exactly where to put the camera for maximum effect. With guys like him, it's the camera that follows the actor and not the other way around: no lesson of cinema is given here, only a lesson of laugh !
