Ladre di saponette
Italy,
1989, 90 min
Shown in 1990
CREDITS
- dir
-
Maurizio Nichetti
- prod
-
Ernesto di Sarro
- scr
-
Maurizio Nichetti, Mauro Monti
- cam
-
Mario Battistoni
- editor
-
Rita Olivati
- cast
-
Maurizio Nichetti, Caterina Sylos Labini, Heidi Komarek
- source
-
Aries Film Releasing Corp., 322 W. 57th St., New York, NY 90019, USA, FAX: 212-247-4588
-
COMMENTS
Distributor Paul Cohen attended the screening.
OTHER
To call Icicle Thief a film-within-a-film is to grossly oversimplify this tangled web of spoof, homage to neo-realism and raspberry to commercial TV. Comic writer/actor/director Maurizio Nichetti stars as Maurizio Nichetti, appearing on television to introduce his latest opus Icicle Thief. And though barely recognizable without his signature moustache, Nichetti also stars in his film-within, a somber black-and-white postwar drama that owes much to de Sica's classic Bicycle Thief. Like many a popular clown, Nichetti (Allegro non Troppo's frustrated cartoonist) yearns for the big social statement. Much to his dismay, the TV transmission is constantly interrupted by brassy commercials; only recently has Italian TV succumbed to the American-style indignity of ads breaking up the program. Electronic havoc ensues as black-and-white hard-luck film characters and glitzy living-color ad-mannequins invade each other's frames while, in the comfort of their living rooms, folks at home remain utterly oblivious to the chaos, unable to distinguish the ads from the films anyhow. Talk about breaking down the fourth wall. Grand Prize winner at the 1998 Moscow Film Festival, Icicle Thief is a maniacally funny and affectionate satire of cinephiles, philistines and the state of Italian film. Manuel de Sica, Vittorio de Sica's son, wrote the score.
—Alica Springer
FACTOID #336
Bing Crosby was invited several times for an onstage tribute at the Festival, reports then-director Claude Jarman, but declined the honor. “Nobody wants to see those little things that I used to do,” he modestly replied. He did attend though, with wife Kathy and their friend, Rita Hayworth.
