‘Miseria e Nobilta’ or — Food, Glorious Food?

‘Poverty and Nobility’, or ‘Miseria e Nobiltà’ (1954), is a crowd-pleasing Italian comedy about two impoverished, and very hungry, families sharing a grotty apartment in Naples when a chance comes their way for money, luxurious living conditions and all the food they can eat simply by impersonating members of the nobility. A deception, sure, but it’s all in the name of amore so that means it’s fine and also that anything goes.

This is a full-on, playing to the galleries, broad, mainstream farce that plays up almost every cliche regarding Italians it is possible to think of and even a few more thrown in for good measure too. Everything revolves around food, specifically spaghetti, sex and people shouting at each other… usually the wives yelling at their husbands because of sex or food. None of this is subtle in the slightest.

What ‘Poverty and Nobility’ also is though is incredibly funny with finely rehearsed performances, intricately crafted gags and all executed with a real sense of theatrical style. Indeed, the film opens with an audience watching the unfolding events as a stage performance before the camera, and us, enter this crazy world. It gives everything a delightfully playful, almost fourth-wall breaking tone, similar to Sasha Guitry’s finest work.

This comes across in the performances with all the actors working as a tightly knitted gang and firing brilliantly off each other, everyone knowing what beats to hit with skilled precision. There’s a wonderful moment where some spaghetti has miraculously appeared on their dining table, each actor slowly and hungrily sliding their chairs forward toward the towering mountain of food. It’s a delightful piece of physical comedy, the set-up for the chairs having been cleverly introduced just a few minutes beforehand. Everyone involved in this movie knows exactly how comedy works.

There’s another inspired moment demonstrating the importance of food when these poor starving Italians are finally given a loaf of bread, something so precious, so invaluable, that it is lovingly presented in a crib and decked out like it’s a new born baby and looked on with beautific reverence. The movie is littered with brilliant little flourishes like that.

Then there’s the moment when the mother kicks the oldest kid out of home, shouting at him that he’s a scrounger and old enough to be out there fending for himself and earning his own way in life as all Italian men should be doing. The gag is he’s only ten years old and I’ve never laughed so hard at child-homelessness before.

Sophia Loren stars in the movie and although her role is important, she’s the reason these families are pretending to be royalty, she’s tends to be more in the background. Not surprisingly she looks stunning and has a suitably extravagant entrance as well as some costumes to die for. Yet the star of the show is the comedic actor Toto who does a great job of managing to be both spectacularly selfish, inconceivably greedy and lovable all at the same time. And when his long desired heaven is turned into a living hell by the appearance of his ex-wife it’s so much fun watching his pain.

‘Poverty and Nobility’ is a very funny, very silly movie and one that’s aimed directly to appeal to everyone. It’s mainstream, sure, but it also has a slyly cutting edge to it too specifically in relation to class and family dynamics along with all the little hypocrisies inherent in both. Expertly acted, nicely directed and filled with life and colour it’s as intoxicating and guzzling down a bowl of ice-cream in one go.