Café Express (film)

Café Express
Café Express
	Film poster
Directed by	Nanni Loy
Written by	Elvio Porta; Nanni Loy; Nino Manfredi
Produced by	Nicola Carraro; Franco Cristaldi
Starring	Nino Manfredi
Cinematography	Claudio Cirillo
Edited by	Franco Fraticelli
Music by	Giovanna Marini
Release date	1980;
Running time	100 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

Café Express is a 1980 Italian comedy film directed by Nanni Loy and starring Nino Manfredi.^[1]

Plot

Michele Abbagnano (Nino Manfredi) ekes out a living by abusively selling coffee, hot milk and cappuccino on the night trains running between Naples and Vallo della Lucania; each night, his goods held in a set of vacuum flasks which he carries in a basket along with handfuls of sugar packets he steals from railway cafés, he moves from carriage to carriage peddling warm drinks to the dazed, sleepy passengers.

The need to maintain his young son (who suffers from a congenital heart deficiency) in an institution and the hope to amass a large enough sum to have him undergo surgery to make him healthy for good is more than enough to keep Michele in his awkward and exhausting line of business, to which, however, he's exceptionally suited.

Keen of eye and wit he manages to befriend most of the passengers on the night trains, helping them with small favours (like waking them up before the stations they need to descend at) and telling tall tales centered on his right arm, which he keeps wrapped in a long leather glove pretending it to be wooden.

Michele tailors the stories to the people he's telling them to...pretending of having been a successful pianist who had his career ruined to a young cross-eyed man pining about having been rejected from the Carabinieri, telling how he saved orphanage boys from a roaring fire to the nun leading some schoolboys, narrating how he lost the limb to freezing on the Eastern Front to the WW2 veteran and so on.

During one night of work Michele will be chased across the train by a trio of conductors who have been ordered by the Ministry of Transports to put an end to his activities once and for all; he'll meet his son (who has escaped from the institution) and will cross paths with a trio of petty thieves decided to enroll him as an accomplice in their misdeeds.

Cast

Nino Manfredi - Michele Abbagnano
Adolfo Celi - chief inspector Ramacci-Pisanelli of the Ministry of Transportation
Vittorio Caprioli - Improta, chief of the pickpockets
Vittorio Mezzogiorno - Diodato "mad man" Amitrano, Improta's accomplice
Antonio Allocca - Califano, Improta's accomplice
Gigi Reder - Antonio Cammarota, the stretcher-bearer
Silvio Spaccesi - Giuseppe Sanguigno, train conductor
Gerardo Scala - Nicola Scognamiglio, train controller (the cooled one)
Luigi Basagaluppi - Vigorito, train controller (the drunkard one)
Marisa Laurito - Liberata, Ferdinando's lover
Marzio Honorato - Ferdinando, Liberata's lover
Vittorio Marsiglia - Picone, the neapolitan businessman
Maurizio Micheli - The piedmontese businessman
Clara Colosimo - Valmarana, the piedmontese businesswoman
Giovanni Piscopo - Michele's son, nicknamed Cazzillo
Leo Gullotta - Imbastaro, the cross-eyed man
Tano Cimarosa - Panepino, railroad police officer
Lina Sastri - Mother Camilla, a nun
Ester Carloni - the old passenger
Nino Terzo - Zappacosta, stationmaster of Vallo della Lucania
Italo Celoro - the worker with bandaged finger
Nino Vingelli - the trickster dressed as a priest
Franca Scagnetti - the passenger leaving the bathroom

Production

The film was initially conceived as a segment of a two-part film titled "Fa male michiare" (lit. 'Mixing Hurts '); the two segments were eventually developed into full-length films, the other of them becoming Steno's Hot Potato.^[2]

Awards

Nino Manfredi won a Nastro d'Argento as best male protagonist in this film.

References

^ Maslin, Janet (2011). "New York Times: Café Express". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 May 2011. Retrieved 3 September 2008.
^ Giusti, Marco (2019). "La patata bollente". Dizionario Stracult della commedia sexy. Bloodbuster edizioni. pp. 326–7. ISBN 978-88-943385-3-9.

External links

Café Express at IMDb

[NY_Times-1] Maslin, Janet (2011). "New York Times: Café Express". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 May 2011. Retrieved 3 September 2008.

[bio-2] Giusti, Marco (2019). "La patata bollente". Dizionario Stracult della commedia sexy. Bloodbuster edizioni. pp. 326–7. ISBN 978-88-943385-3-9.

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