Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) on Netflix
Jailed for a bungled car theft, Cosimo hands his pawnshop heist plan to boxer Peppe, who brings in Mario, Michele, Tiberio and Capannelle. The safe waits behind a wall next door.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.9/1013,049 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Cosimo, a small-time Roman crook, is doing a few months for a bungled car theft when the pawnshop heist he took from a fellow inmate reaches Peppe, a boxer with a clean record who was bribed to confess to the charge. Peppe then takes the plan to the rest of the circle: Mario, the youngest; Michele, a posturing Sicilian saving for his sister's dowry; Tiberio, a photographer minding his baby while his wife serves a sentence; and Capannelle, an old pickpocket. The job rests on a flimsy wall an inmate built between a pawnshop safe and the apartment beside it, and on breaking through from that apartment. Because none of them can open a safe, Dante, a safe cracker on parole, lends tools and a short lesson.
Cast
- Gina Amendolaas Mario's 'Madre'
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producers doubted Big Deal on Madonna Street would succeed, so they put the comedian Totò on the original poster to draw audiences, even though his character only advises the heist gang rather than joining it.
- Dialogue in the film was entirely post-dubbed, as was customary in Italian cinema. Director Mario Monicelli said non-professionals such as Carlo Pisacane and Tiberio Murgia, neither of them actors, did not know how to recite their lines, so their voices had to be dubbed.
- Bob Fosse turned the film into the Broadway musical Big Deal, set in 1930s Chicago with an African-American cast. It opened on April 10, 1986, closed that June 8 after just 69 performances, and drew five Tony Award nominations, with Fosse winning for his choreography.
- Piero Umiliani's breezy jazz score for Big Deal on Madonna Street helped shape the jazz soundtracks that became characteristic of European films in the 1960s and 1970s.
- The film gave a significant boost to the careers of Vittorio Gassman and Marcello Mastroianni; Gassman broke into comedic roles that had previously been considered unsuitable for him.
- In 2008 Italy's Ministry of Cultural Heritage placed the film on its list of 100 Italian films to be saved, in recognition of its impact on the country's collective memory between 1942 and 1978.
