Toto’

You’d probably either need to be Italian or be a serious Italophile to know anything about this person. He is one of the most famous comic Italian actors ever, at least from the previous generation of actors. Now take a deep breath because here comes his formal name: Prince Antonio Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno De Curtis di Bisanzio Gagliardi. Some with perhaps compromised lung capacity (or memory) also knew him as Antonio De Curtis – a name that can be said in one breath and that he used for himself. He was born in a poor section of Naples as an illegitimate child. The story of this early life is quite amazing and if interested you can find the Wikipedia page about him if you click here.

He was considered a comic genius, sometimes compared to our Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Not only that but he was a singer, composed songs and wrote acclaimed poetry. He was acting by the time he was 15 and eventually starred in about 100 movies – probably many of them forgettable other than his presence. There are 3 movies on Netflix (DVD only) and I have watched two of them. The first, Toto’ nella Luna, made in 1958 was just silliness that kind of reminded me of a Marx brothers movie. I liked it enough to watch a second one Dov’e’ la Liberta’ (Where is Freedom). I really liked this movie. While it certainly took advantage of Toto’s comic talents it at the same time has serious parts to it. I highly recommend it. There is another one that I now plan to watch “Uccellacci e uccellini” which translates literally as “Bad birds and little birds” but which Netflix lists as “Hawks and Sparrows.”

As with anyone with such a vast body of work there’s a lot of stuff on Youtube although mostly it is without subtitles and is often hard for me to follow. I did find this one short clip which has subtitles but also, unfortunately, poor video quality. Here is Toto’ selling the Trevi Fountain.

Let me know what you think.

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 25th, 2013 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.