SilentComedyMafia.com

Given the convenience of amazon's new Italian branch and the promise of English subs, I finally dared watch COMI INGUAIAMMO IL CINEMA ITALIANO, a feature length documentary on the zany Italian comedy team Franco & Ciccio, Keaton's partners in WAR ITALIAN STYLE. My main interest was, of course, that film and its making. It's covered only briefly, and quite critically. However, we do get to see what seems to be all that exists in terms of newsreel footage of Keaton in Italy -- all 16 or 17 seconds of it - albeit from a different event a decade earlier.

I found the documentary well worth seeing in its own right though as career overview of two major comic players in the 60s/70s European film industry.That seems to be a whole interesting subject in itself, the " lesser" comedians (as opposed to the auteurs like Tati and Etaix), of e.g. Italian, German, Austrian, French or Danish cinema of that era. Most of them apparently didn't export across language and cultural barriers too well, in spite of occasional attempts to adapt their films for foreign markets.

Here's the amazon link:
http://www.amazon.it/Inguaiammo-Cinema- ... =8-1-spell
And for all who'll discover the film this Slapsticon, WAR's original, longer Italian cut is still in print in a beautiful anamorphic DVD transfer:
http://www.amazon.it/Due-Marines-Genera ... =1-1-spell

Uli

And here's the Keaton clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sayPQkX9-XM