Johnny Tandpetaren

Dante is small and pale, and just plain ugly. But he is as good as gold. Which does not, however, help him find a woman. But one day Maria drives into his car. Dante falls in love, but Maria disappears. Until one day when she caUs him from a villa in Sicily; Does he want to visit her? Sure. But things are not the way Dante thinks they are. In the cellar lurks the maffioso Johnny Stecchino, Dante's unscrupulous double.
Comment:
In the Marx brothers' A Night in Casablanca, Harpo is leaning against a building when a policeman walks by. ''Why are you loitering here? Do you think you're supporting the building?'', the policeman says. Harpo nods in agreement. ''It is not in order, get out of here''. Shamefacedly Harpo trudges away and the building immediately crumbles to pieces.
I came to think of this scene when watching Johnny Stecchino, Benigni's second feature, where he plays two of the main parts himself. But Benigni definitely should not be compared to any of the Marx brothers. Benigni's second film is a victory won by hard labor and there is an inspired moment when Benigni strikes that which is essential to all comic art. On one level the film is a love story between the confused Dante, who is almost run over, and the
beautiful Maria who nearly crashes into his car. She invites him to her villa outside of Palermo, where she lives with her uncle, a man who suffers from an unusual kind of diabetes, for which the only cure is called cocaine. Here we also find Johnny Stecchino, a maffioso who always has a toothpick in his mouth, as the American custom has it.
The two characters have nothing in com· mon, except that they look exactly like each other. They only meet in one scene the truly comic gem of the movie. Johnny Stecchino opens the closet that Dante has hid in. They look at each other straight in the eye. Dante follows every move Johnny Stecchino makes. The result is that Johnny takes Dante for a mirror image and closes the closet. Benigni makes film history with that scene!
Johnny Stecchino is the first real comedy to be made on the maffia. We will surely hear more from Benigni in the future. He has, for example, said yes to the thankless task of taking over Peter Sellers' part as the confused Inspector Closeau. A new Pink Panther film is now being shot. Perhaps he will have a new accent; ''Bombe ich? Mamma Mia, bomba qui? No'' .... Booom!
Peter Loewe