Le vie del signore sono finite - 1987

Camillo has a psichosomatic paralysis, can’t walk but there is nothing wrong with him. He is like this since his girlfriend Vittoria left him. He went to Lourdes with his brother Leone to help him and became friends with Orlando, also on a wheelchair.

When Vittoria goes back to Camillo, he soon finds he can walk again, but doesn’t want to tell anyone for Orlando’s sake. He tells his brother and Vittoria though.

He asks Vittoria to introduce a friend to Orlando, but it doesn’t go well. Orlando, not knowing that Vittoria is Camillo’s girlfriend, likes her instead of her friend. On the other hand, the girl Anita is a passionate supporter of Mussolini rising to power, and thinks him a subversive.

Orlando sees Camillo on his feet through a crack in the door.

Camillo tries to get a patent for his inventions, but it doesn’t go well because a cure for hair loss is not the priority during Mussolini’s reign.

Back home, he learns that Orlando went out with Vittoria and becomes crazy jealous, and is hurtful to them both.

She says she was simply translated his poems into French, but Camillo doesn’t relent, and after all Orlando was in love with Vittoria.

Because of Anita going to tell on Camillo’s political ideas, he is assaulted, but in defending himself one of the others gets shot in the leg, and Camillo ends up in prison.

Two years later, the prison has taken its toll and he is once again on a wheelchair. Well, he also thought that Orlando had gone to Paris with Vittoria, that they were together, but orlando comes to tell him he’ll soon be out of prison and that he was never with Vittoria.

Finally Camillo gets out and goes back home, to his brother and father.

Camillo is still crazy jealous and goes mad when he finds a postcard from Vittoria in Leone’s drawer, hidden away. He’s mad at his brother from keeping it from him, and since the postcard is a picture of her with the hat he gave Orlando (and Orlando gave it to her before she left), he thinks that she actually is with Orlando. Leone reinforces this idea. Leone had been the one always taking care of him and now he feels abandoned.

Camillo goes to Paris to look for Vittoria who is not at the old address, but some people help him find her. She works as a translator for an Italian writer and Camillo is of course sure that it is Orlando, who lied to him and betrayed him… but of course it’s not, Orlando is not the only man in Italy who writes.

Camillo talks with the writer (and once again is less than kind…) and waits for Vittoria to arrive. 

They finally meet and kiss and promise to stay together forever.

Camillo Pianese - Massimo Troisi

No grazie, il caffè mi rende nervoso - 1982

 Michele Giuffrida works for a newspaper in Napoli, but he’s not a great journalist, he does whatever small job they give him. He has a father he keeps locked in a house with a woman watching over him, and he doesn’t let him out because he says he’s dangerous. This is because his father is resentful that he says that he wrote various songs and they were all stolen from him.

Lisa is a photographer with ambitions.

There’s going to be a Festival in Napoli, but there’s an accident and three people are injured.

A postcard arrives at the “Il Mattino”, signed by Funiculì Funiculà, which is the title of an old song, warning that everyone connected with the Festival will die. Michele wants to ignore it, but Lisa gives it to their boss and it gets printed. Michele is assigned to write on this, but he’s scared. He keeps saying he’s not able to write good articles, but Lisa keeps pushing him and involving him in her investigation.

At night, while helping a blind guy called Dieci Decimi, he hears gunshots, and a guy comes stumbling towards him, saying weird things he doesn’t understand the meaning of, and then dies. Criminals arrive on cars and beat him up and take him away, sure that the guy told him something important and even gave him something. Michele tells them everything he remembers but he has nothing. He manages to escape but then he is caught again while with Lisa , so they take her away to force him to give them what they think he has. Michele tries to free her, but in the end she is the one to help both of them out of there.

Troisi plays himself, actor Troisi who has been invited to this Festival, but then he gets threatened by the maniac who has already killed once, James Senese who had ignored his warning.

No matter how much security guards they promise him, he refuses to take part in this festival anymore. Lisa suggests saying that, but then surprising everyone at the end. He gets killed.

Eventually Lisa meets Michele in his ‘study’, and finds out the truth, that it was Michele who killed them because he can’t stand all their talk about changing Napoli, which is perfect the way it always was. The police arrive to arrest him.

Michele - Lello Arena

Massimo Troisi as himself.

Scusate il ritardo - 1983

Interesting film, but I don't like the main character at all, he's spoiled, idle, totally self-absorbed, not really caring about anything else. I don't dislike him either, because he's not a bad guy, in his own way he does care for his loved ones, but it's really hard to stand him. He should treasure the friends he's got.

Vincenzo lives with his mother and his sister’s family. He has no job but doesn’t really want to find one. His sister buys the food, his mother takes care of his clothes. He only helps a little around the house when he is asked, but still complains that they asked him instead of his brother Alfredo, when he’s home. Vincenzo is also jealous of his brother, because he made a career for himself as a comedian. He has a friend, Tonino, who keeps crying because his girlfriend of three years left him for someone else, but Vincenzo is rather annoyed by all his whining. He listens because Tonino insists he needs to talk, but is not very understanding, and even tells him that maybe it was his fault because he was too attentive, oppressive, and maybe ugly too.

When he meets Anna, a friend of his sister, he likes her immediately, and they start going out with friends, but they quickly become a couple. Anna had a relationship who ended badly, and she’s looking for some tenderness.

Vincenzo has the keys to the apartment above his own, belonging to an old professor (we see Vincenzo bringing him his meal, entering with his key), and he takes Anna there when he knows the professor is out, so they can make love (without asking the old man's permission, btw).

When Anna tells him she loves him, he says he’s glad, and with a little prompting he admits ‘me too’. 

He never tells her anything nice, never starts anything; he shows a total lack of empathy when a crying Tonino speaks of killing himself. When Tonino speaks of getting it over with, that one day as a lion is better than a hundred as a sheep, Vincenzo tells him to live 50 years as a teddy bear, not really believing he would do it, and as a way to shut him up (fai 50 giorni da orsacchiotto)

Vincenzo never stays long in bed after love, he always gets up to make coffee or to listen to the radio or whatever, and when she speaks to him about her doubts he is sort of annoyed.

Eventually she leaves him, convinced he would not even care.

Tonino is not sad anymore, he finally found another girl that he likes, and he tries to console Vincenzo but Vincenzo is rather… he says that their situations are completely different, because it was clear why Tonino had been dumped, because he was ugly and sent her an ugly picture of himself, while there is no known reason why Anna left him. Even adds that Tonino’s situation was better because there was the other guy, the Swedish guy, so he knew there was a reason, she left him for that Swedish guy, and he at least knew that he was the second person in the world she liked best…

Tonino is a good, understanding friend and speaks to Anna to tell her that Vincenzo feels awful and they should talk, and so she goes to him to tell him she had even thought of going back to her job in Perugia, and he asks her not to go, to stay with him. 

The end.

Vincenzo - Massimo Troisi

Anna - Giuliana De Sio

Tonino - Lello Arena

The film was written and directed by Troisi.

Ricomincio da tre - 1981

Restored. A film written and directed by Troisi. Music by Pino Daniele.

Well, it’s a film with Troisi so you know how it is, melancholic music, slow scenes, sentences that never get finished, …

Gaetano leaves his friends and everything behind when he moves to Firenze to stay with his aunt Antonia. He says that this time he will leave for real, he’s tired, he says he wants to start back , start from 3, not from scratch (or zero, as we say) but from three, because some things are good and he wants to keep them. He has a family, he has friends, he even has a job.

He has no plan, we see him hitchhiking and being given a ride by a man who wants to kill himself, so instead it’s Gaetano who drives him to the mental hospital. He meets Marta there, and he likes her. He sees her again, and asks him about the guy, so they talk about suicides.

He finds out his aunt, who he was staying with, has a relationship with a professor, so he leaves her house and stays in Frank’s apartment. Frank is American, not exactly a preacher but he goes to talk to people, something like that.

Marta tells him he acts like he wants to win her over, and he denies it, she wonders if he likes her, and he jumps up and tells her no, or yes, but like a sister…

Hs friend Lello comes to visit from Napoli. After hours of looking for a hotel, Gaetano would like to go out with Marta, but Lello has an accident so he goes to see him at the hospital (hospital… nobody around, a kind nun in white, everybody comfortably in their bed… nothing like the hospital I’ve seen…)

Marta talks to Gaetano about his shyness and always being hesitant, then she offers him to spend the night, since it’s already 2am. She is the one to take the initiative, since he wouldn’t have been able to , she blames his lack of self-confidence. Gaetano moves in with her.

Everybody, upon hearing that he’s from Napoli, asks him if he’s an immigrant; this annoys him a bit, because he says he had a job before, he simply decided he wanted to travel…

Gaetano always keeps his real thoughts to himself, just like he never confessed that he really liked her, he pretends he’s not jealous at all, and when she tells him she slept with someone else, he doesn’t say anything, pretends like he’s not jealous and doesn’t care, but he does. She insists she loves him, though, and when she thinks she’s pregnant, she says she’s not 100% sure who the father is, but she wants to have the baby with Gaetano because she loves him. 

At first he’s rather upset by this, but they talk and he has a bit of time to think, and then he surprises her by talking about names, and she smiles when he suggests Ugo like his father, and then Ciro if she doesn’t like the other one. This means that he’s decided he loves her too and wants to raise the child with her.

Gaetano - Massimo Troisi

“Lello” Raffaele - Lello Arena

Marta - Fiorenza Marchegiani

Frankie - Vincent Gentile

Robertino - Renato Scarpa

Mental patient - Marco Messeri

Suicidal car driver - Michele Mirabella

Pensavo fosse amore… invece era un calesse - 1991

 Nice, without the finale you’d expect if you’ve never seen it. Nice film, good. Slow, but that’s a given. There’s Troisi in it, which means repeated sentences, slow scenes. 

Tommaso and Cecilia are together. On their anniversary they make love but at a certain point he moans Elena, or so it seems, and she gets mad. He denies knowing any Elena, and she storms out. Then there’s a Raùla that he tells her doesn’t exist. Cecilia thinks he keeps lying to her. Amedeo, who works with Cecilia at the bookstore, tells him that lies kill love. Tommaso insists he did not say Elena and he has nothing to do with any Raùla.

Chiara, Amedeo’s younger sister, comes onto him but he calls her little girl,  tells her no and leaves. Next time they see each other, she puts poison in his coffee.

Cecilia is always angry and unhappy, and her mom tells her to leave Tommaso, to erase him, and she tries. She leaves him by telling Amedeo while Tommaso is still hospitalised.  They were about to get married. When his friends tell him they saw Cecilia with another man, he complains they shouldn’t have, but then when he hears she was at a party also attended by Amedeo and his new girlfriend Flora (ex girlfriend of their friend Giorgio who cried for her at Amedeo’s house when she left him), Tommaso wants to know everything is very insistent, if she was with someone else.

When later on he talks briefly with Cecilia, she tells him she’s with Enea now, and he makes her feel special, desired. She also tells him that he was spent with her, without fire, that he’s better without her.

He can’t move on, forget her.

He sees Enea and dislikes him. He finds another girl and the next morning he tells her she shouldn’t have left her ex-boyfriend.

Enea is always loud, always doing something, but soon we see she’s less enthusiastic , and one day Enea sees her with Tommaso in a private moment behind a bookshelf and is heartbroken.

Chiara sets fire to Enea’s scooter because he had called her a child.

Tommaso and Cecilia are again planning their wedding, but he feels different, he’s not in love anymore. He leaves her waiting at the altar then sends her a note and they meet at a cafè for coffee, still in their wedding clothes.

He says they’re not made for marriage, and they plan on seeing each other again.

Tommaso - Massimo Troisi

Cecilia - Francesca Neri