A somewhat self-important film director attends a TV studio where his latest film, The Icicle Thief, is to be shown as part of an arts programme. During transmission, loud colour commercials constantly interrupt the sombre black and white film, frustrating the director. A power failure results in a strange fusion where he enters the world of his film which itself has fused with the commercials that have been relentlessly interrupting it.
This Italian comedy is the brain child of Maurizio Nichetti who not only plays a dual role of the film director and star of the movie-within-a-movie, but also directs the film proper as well as co-wrote the thing. So quite a labour of love and an impressive achievement. The movie operates I guess in three distinct ways – as a parody of the film The Bicycle Thief (1948) and Italian neo-realism in general, a satirical assessment of commercialism vs art and lastly as an inventive bit of imaginative cinema where three worlds merge together. The worlds of course are the 'real' world of the TV studio and households watching television, the world of the movie itself and lastly the world of the commercials. It's an idea which is executed very nicely with some fun cross-references between the realities which allows for a few amusing observations. It's an idea which was used in Woody Allen's earlier The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) but Nichetti definitely takes the concept further and makes more of it. Overall, this is an amusing, inventive and clever bit of comedy.
This Italian comedy is the brain child of Maurizio Nichetti who not only plays a dual role of the film director and star of the movie-within-a-movie, but also directs the film proper as well as co-wrote the thing. So quite a labour of love and an impressive achievement. The movie operates I guess in three distinct ways – as a parody of the film The Bicycle Thief (1948) and Italian neo-realism in general, a satirical assessment of commercialism vs art and lastly as an inventive bit of imaginative cinema where three worlds merge together. The worlds of course are the 'real' world of the TV studio and households watching television, the world of the movie itself and lastly the world of the commercials. It's an idea which is executed very nicely with some fun cross-references between the realities which allows for a few amusing observations. It's an idea which was used in Woody Allen's earlier The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) but Nichetti definitely takes the concept further and makes more of it. Overall, this is an amusing, inventive and clever bit of comedy.