TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Sicilia!

Totò che visse due volte

Daniele Ciprì, Franco Maresco
1998 - Italy - 1h33
int. -12 ans

A sexual obsessive who is ready to undergo all kinds of humiliations to satisfy his desires and breaks into the house of the travelling prostitute who stays in the village for a few days, an old homosexual who would like to attend his lover's wake but fears the wrath of his in-laws, a local messiah wandering in the countryside, somewhat inclined to preach and perform miracles. These are the three heroes of this film.

Totò che visse due volte is the second of three feature films that Daniele Ciprì and Franco Maresco directed together. It was screened in the official selection in Berlin in 1998 and banned in Italy even before it was even released. “This film is an attack on the sacred, on mankind,” said one of the censors. To which the directors replied: “Our film is a religious film with a sense of the sacred that is entirely the opposite of blasphemy. It's true that our messiah is not traditional. He's from Palermo.” The Sicilian landscape seems to be a place where everything takes on a universal meaning and the city becomes a theatre of the absurd populated by lost souls.

CAST AND CREW

Cast : Marcello Miranda, Carlo Giordano, Pietro Arciadiacono
Screenplay : Daniele Ciprì, Franco Maresco
Cinematography : Luca Bigazzi
Sound : Luigi Melchionda
Editing : Daniele Ciprì, Franco Maresco

Production : Tea Nova, Lucky Red, Istituto Luce

French distributor : ED Distribution