Marcello Mastroianni credited as playing...
Pippo 'Fred' Botticella
- Pippo Botticella: Unquestionably, we descend from the apes. The trouble is we can't get back to them, to their gift of instinct, of natural innocence.
- Amelia Bonetti: It might be wise to drop some moves, you know, like the lift. I don't want to end up on the floor.
- Pippo Botticella: You'd still be in my arms.
- Amelia Bonetti: I meant to ask you, why didn't your wife come with you?
- Pippo Botticella: She just didn't come. Isn't it better?
- Amelia Bonetti: A handsome fellow, but drugs, armed robbery, kidnapping. A big crook and still so young.
- Pippo Botticella: Good for him.
- Amelia Bonetti: So many crimes already!
- Pippo Botticella: Good for him!
- Pippo Botticella: You with your little bourgeois baby face, you make your bundle off the sweat of others.
- Amelia Bonetti: What are you ranting about?
- Pippo Botticella: That young man refuses to be exploited, he rebels and I a'm on his side. He wages a just war against the system's abuses. That's all I have to say!
- Amelia Bonetti: This is the voice of raging senility! You're going through mental-pause! So I'm an exploitive boss?
- Pippo Botticella: You have a business with employees who work for you?
- Amelia Bonetti: I break my neck from 6am till midnight in a two-bit outfit with a tiny staff and I'm a slave driver?
- Pippo Botticella: Amelia, we've got to rebel! I'm on the rebels' side. We've got to rebel against all this too. I burn when I see injustice. I burn!
- Amelia Bonetti: So, go ahead and burn!
- Pippo Botticella: Just let me up on that stage. Let me up on that stage and you'll see! Tonight, I talk, I spill the beans, to 60 million Italians. I'll say it all.
- Amelia Bonetti: What are you going to say?
- Pippo Botticella: You're all sheep!--You're all sheep! You're all sheep! You're all sheep! You're all sheep! You're all sheep! You're all sheep! You think I'm here for the 800,000 lire? I don't give a shit! So you invented television? You watch television day and night? You pay attention only to television? Then tonight, listen to me. To me!
- Pippo Botticella: It's kind of nice here. It's like a dream, far from reality. You have no idea where you are.
- Amelia Bonetti: I tell myself that I'm doing it for my little nephews or for my friends or on an impulse. The truth is, I really wanted to see you again.
- Pippo Botticella: Ah. Very romantic. I was looking forward to seeing you too.
- Pippo Botticella: You always got this part wrong. Not the steps--the expression of the face. You smile. It's just the opposite, much more subtle. Here the melody ends, embracing, oblivious, like a dream. Do you get it?
- Amelia Bonetti: Who asked you for a sermon?
- Pippo Botticella: The midget in orange--she looks just like you.
- Amelia Bonetti: I see you after 30 years and this is the thanks I get?
- Pippo Botticella: Finally! It's about time for a serious discussion of tap-dancing.
- Amelia Bonetti: Bravo!
- Pippo Botticella: Tap-dancing is not just a dance. It's more, much more. Much more
- Amelia Bonetti: Be more specific! I agree that tap-dancing is much more, much more.
- Pippo Botticella: Yes! It's much more! Yes.
- Pippo Botticella: At first, tap was not a dance at all.
- Amelia Bonetti: What was it?
- Pippo Botticella: The Morse code of black slaves. A wireless telegraph.
- Amelia Bonetti: How so?
- Pippo Botticella: On the cotton plantations, when slaves talked instead of worked, the slave driver whipped their skin off. So what does your black slave do? He communes with his brother like this.
- [taps with this hands on his legs]
- Pippo Botticella: "Watch it, the guard's around!"
- [taps a different rhythm]
- Pippo Botticella: "I have a knife"
- [taps a different rhythm]
- Pippo Botticella: "Shall I do him in?"
- [taps a different rhythm]
- Pippo Botticella: "I love you"
- [taps a similar rhythm, Amelia smiles]
- Pippo Botticella: "I love you too".
- Journalist: Very interesting! The language of love and death!
- Pippo Botticella: [begins undressing] I feel a bit shy. Yet we slept together so many times!
- Amelia Bonetti: You're so sweet! Are we in such bad shape?
- Pippo Botticella: These days, when I undress in front of a woman I avoid it, if I can. And you?
- Amelia Bonetti: Who, me? I don't have those problems. Boy, you ask some questions!
- Pippo Botticella: Pardon moi, madame. Once upon a time, when I undressed, I'd get a round of applause from the lucky girl! Oh, yes. No slouch was old Pippo--stage name, Fred!
- Amelia Bonetti: In fact, I lasted 15 years with the sexual nomad, as you defined yourself.
- Pippo Botticella: What was it like--with your husband?
- Amelia Bonetti: It was all very different. You and I were so young back then.
- Pippo Botticella: Toto told you I flipped? Who knows what possessed me after you left? Separation anxiety, loneliness.
- Amelia Bonetti: I swear I didn't know. I'd have come immediately.
- Pippo Botticella: What for? We broke up, we weren't working anymore. Only these lunatics could remember us. We're phantoms. We arise from the darkness and vanish.