(19 January, 2016) While in Rome, at the Sistina Theater, the musical version is a success with audiences and critics alike (with over 50,000 spectators from December 9 to January 17), the original film is ready to take over Budapest. The Federico Fellini Hall of the Italian Cultural Institute in Budapest is ready to pay tribute to Italian cinema and one of his most famous and acclaimed directors, with the screening of Il Marchese del Grillo (1981) by Mario Monicelli. The event is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 26 at 6pm. The film is set in the early 19th century, in a Rome threatened by Napoleon’s campaigns. Here lives the Marquis Onofrio del Grillo, guard of the Papal State with a sunny and funny disposition. His days always start late in the morning, with servants in his palace forced to remain quiet until he rises, and are spent in the organization of jokes, frequenting taverns, gambling dens and young girls from the populace. At the end of an evening spent at an inn, the Marquis finds a drunk known as Gasperino who is his perfect double. Not one to let a good joke go, Onofrio brings the drunk man to his home and sets up a brilliant farce, so precise that even his relatives won’t notice the difference between the two men. The beloved film from 1981 as inspired by reports on a true person featured in the papal archives of the early 18th. The subtle irony, sarcasm and comedy of Onofrio Marchese del Grillo, played by a great Alberto Sordi, is a good excuse to expose the reality of Rome under the papacy. (Red)
