Franco & Ciccio Fans
By Antonio Scibetta
October 19, 2025
Ciccio Ingrassia was born in Palermo, in the Capo
district, at a time when dreams cost less but weighed more.
It was 1922, and Sicily was covered by dusty misery and
the voices of merchants screaming in the alleys.
He, Francesco for the recorder, “Ciccio” for anyone who
met him even once, was not born an artist. Born poor, like many, but with the
irony that in some Palermo it’s a form of survival.
He did everything: the barber, the carpenter, the waiter.
But in every profession, there was a mimic, a smurf, a joke, as if even reality
was a scene to be acted out. And maybe it really was.
Then Franco Franchi arrived, and with him fate.
Two different but complementary Sicilians: one, fire and
instinct; the other, measure and melancholy. Franco and Ciccio — two names like
two drumbeats. They found themselves on the variety tables, between laughter
and flickering lights of provincial theaters, and from that moment on their
lives became a long scene in two.
They were loved, misunderstood, snubbed and rediscovered.
They shot more than a hundred movies, many of which the
critics did not want to understand, but that the people learned by heart. And
inside that overwhelming comedy, there was often the pain of those who, by
profession, have to make people laugh even when they don’t want to.
Fatty was different from Franco.
She had in her gaze the melancholy of those who know that
laughter is a thin mask. When he was playing the “serious” next to the “mad”,
he almost seemed to be protecting his friend with the composition of an older
brother.
Yet, when he walked away from the duo, he showed his true
nature as an actor.
Federico Fellini wanted it in Amarcord, and Ingrassia,
silent and precise, knows how to say more with a look than with a thousand
jokes.
Elio Petri made it Honorable in Todo Modo film taken from
Sciascia's text, and there his irony became bitter, fierce, changing: a man who
laughs while everything around him collapses.
He won the Silver Ribbon, but he didn't brag about it. He
just said: “It was a good script, and I said it how I felt. ”
Then came Luigi Comencini and the miracle of Pinocchio.
Franco and Ciccio, transformed into Cat and Fox, clever
and human, comical and heartbreaking.
For an entire generation, they were the real masters of
that puppet who wanted to become a child.
In their way of lying to live there was the truth of many
Italians of that time: poor, naive, clever by necessity.
But fate, we know, is a capricious actor.
When Giuseppe Tornatore was looking for a face for his
Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, it is said that he thought of him, in Ciccio, for the
role of the elder Alfredo.
And he, who had that perfect melancholy for the
character, waited.
But then the part went to others, and the movie became a
legend without him.
We got it badly
In my heart, however, I’ve always been a Palermo
resident.
He never got rid of his land, nor did he want to.
Sicily stuck to him to words, gestures, breaks.
It was her inner grammar: a language made of looks and
silences.
He used to say: “In Sicily people laugh so they don’t die
of melancholy. ”
And he has always been.
In recent years, after Franco’s death, it’s become more
silent.
As if the theater was shut down and life was left to act
on itself.
In 1991 he won a David di Donatello for condominium, and
it was a late recognition, almost a compensation for the time.
He died in Rome in 2003, but at the end he never left: he
remained in the eyes of those who saw him do a smurf, a pause, a bow.
Ciccio Ingrassia was not just a comedian.
He was a man who transformed rice into philosophy,
poverty into poetry, Sicily into theatre.
He acted even when no one was watching him.
Because it is, if you like it.
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