By Domenico Palattella
The most
important partnership they had however, was with the director Lucio Fulci, who
directed them perhaps in their best films: from the hilarious "00-2
secret agents" to "I
due evasi di Sing Sing" , passing through "Il
lungo, il corto, il gatto" and " 00-2
Operazione Luna ", all films that easily exceeded one billion lire in
receipts. In 1966, at the height of their golden age, it is the amusing
film "Come svaligiammo la Banca d’ItaliaHow", considered by many to be the couple's
best film. The film in question, was directed by Lucio Fulci, the director
who best managed to understand and exploit the undoubted, enormous abilities of
the couple, and was also the director who best understood their first level
comic potential. It is no coincidence that the 20 films directed by Fulci,
who came from a long apprenticeship as assistant director in several films with
Totò, are considered among the best of the famous couple. Besides, Franco
and Ciccio were very comfortable working with the Roman director. Other
films worth mentioning include "Ma chi t’ha dato
la patente?" (1971), "I
due vigili" (1967), "Per
un pugno nell’occhio" (1964), "Due
bianchi nell’Africa” (1970), "I due
deputati" (1969), "I
barbieri di Sicilia" (1967), "I due sanculotti" (1966), "Franco e Ciccio
on the warpath" (1971), "I due
pompieri" (1968), "The Two Craziest
Beetles in the World" (1970) and countless other hit
films, never a flop! Even "The Primitive Love" of
1964 is considered, by an authoritative critic like Marco Giusti, "a
stracult of fearful strength with magnificent colors".
It is said that
it was a pleasure to work on the set with both, they were very disciplined,
kind and available to everyone. Franco and Ciccio, who had suffered from
hunger in the years of their apprenticeship, were always very generous with
friends, helped many people to live and made many old characters and actors of
the unemployed a chance to work: like Enzo Andronico, Ignazio Leone and a very
young Lino Banfi, which shortly thereafter would break through in the cinema of
the 1970s and 1980s. Even the committed cinema, however, noticed them:
Steno directed them in the film "A Monster and a Half" (1965),
and Pier Paolo Pasolini wanted them alongside Totò in the episode of "Capriccio
all'italiana", "What are the clouds?" 1968. But above
all Franco and Ciccio interpreted a free, but delicious reduction of the "Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza" from Cervantes. The film is from 1968,
and the two actors outdo each other, respectively Ciccio in the role of the
errant knight, and Franco his faithful squire. It is the most beautiful
Italian film inspired by the legendary work of Cervantes, clean, linear, fun,
conceived with a certain libertarian spirit that leaves its mark (Sancho /
Franks who becomes governor and legislator in favor of the people, the final
incitement of Don Quixote / Ingrassia to "fight against the wind" as
the inevitable fate of an unapproved life, but the public showed, in any case,
to prefer them, in their unleashed farces, where, albeit in a repetitive way,
they had the opportunity to express their potential comedy, freely, with a free
rein. To date, by critics, a certain process of reassessment in the
historical-cultural field of their artistic production has begun, a
well-deserved reassessment. Between various quarrels, the 1973 division,
reconciliation and other various vicissitudes, theirs was a fraternal
friendship, indeed more, a bond that went beyond friendship, a blood bond, an
indivisible bond even after death, a divine bond. We both knew it very
well, and we who are the public also knew it very well, in this regard I quote
a moving phrase by Franco Franchi which testifies, without a shadow of a doubt,
their indissoluble bond: a blood bond, an indivisible bond even after
death, a divine bond. "We are the couple! See also separate, we
are always together. Where I am there is also Ciccio and where there is
Ciccio you always look for me. Like Stan and Ollie. When Ollie made
those films with John Wayne he wasn't laughing, because you always thought of Stanley. Franco and
Ciccio are one of those indivisible photographs, which cannot be torn
apart. God made us like this, united, and united we must remain”.
Yet both Franco
and Ciccio, in the few years of artistic separation, have shown that they are
both very valid actors, even taken individually. Franco continued to reap
hits in popular cinema, and above all stand out "The Midday Executioner" and "Last
Tango in Zagarol", two precise parodies of two very successful
films: "The Executioner of the Night" with
Charles Bronson, and "Last tango in Paris” by Bernardo Bertolucci. Franco's
two parodies were, and it is a remarkable novelty, much appreciated by critics
as well as by the public. In the meantime Ciccio was discovered and
employed by committed directors, Federico Fellini above all, who directed him
in the famlous "Amarcord" (1974),
which won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1975. But there is no shortage of
heights in popular cinema as well, in 1975, in fact, Ciccio Ingrassia directs
and interprets the film "The exorcism" , with Lino
Banfi also in the cast. The film, which had great success then, has become
today, a real "cult movie" of popular vintage
cinema. It is certain that Franco Franchi is not entirely wrong: albeit very
good as always, it has a certain effect to see in the few films they have
played separately, Franco alone without Ciccio, or vice versa.
And yet, after
yet another reconciliation, it is with their last coupled film, in 1984, that
Franco and Ciccio verge on perfection. The icing on the cake to a great
career, with the film "Kaos", by the brothers
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, in the episode "The jar",
taken from the most beautiful novel by the writer Luigi Pirandello. It is
in these 40 minutes, of their episode, that for the length is a full-length
medium-length film, that Franco and Ciccio overcome themselves by showing off
an applause, poetic, dramatic, composed, poignant interpretation, which even
moves the critics. It seemed almost that Pirandello, in writing the story,
had thought of Franco and Ciccio, to make the deeds of Zi Dima and Don Lollò
live: absolutely perfect. A fabulous interpretation that earned him thunderous
applause at the Venice Film Festival, for both, and the failure to win the
Golden Lion, as best actors ex-aequo, just because the critics, giving the
prize to Franco and Ingrassia, would have seen his credible credibility
collapse. "Never was the most effervescent and perfect couple seen in
the frequent staging of the famous Pirandellian novel". And for
the same Franco and Ciccio it was a moment of revenge and great pride: "at
best there is never an end, it fascinates me, it moves me to have played
Pirandello, and paired with Franco, a unique emotion" (Ciccio
Ingrassia ); "I never thought I would be invited one day, here to
the Venice Film Festival, and to receive thunderous applause, and I would never
have imagined playing Pirandello one day" (Franco Franchi).
Franco and Ciccio, in
conclusion, really represented Italy and the Italians in their daily
vicissitudes to survive, to keep going, and they are also a symbol of
friendship, the real one, the one that even if you fight, lasts for the whole
life, the deep one, which survives death. They were, not one of the
couples of Italian cinema, but probably "the couple of Italian
cinema" , their myth is alive more than ever today, perhaps even
more than then, and they are by right among the greats of our cinema as bearers
of that noble and ancient art of making people laugh that has its roots, far
away, in the mists of time.
