The Last Wagon (1943)

Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi appear here together in this fascist-era comedy. Their most famous film together would be the Rossellini neo-realist masterpiece OPEN CITY made as the war was ending a couple of years later. Federico Fellini collaborated on the script of this quite silly story about a Roman horse-and-buggy cabbie and his bout with Anna Magnani, a singer, over a lost necklace. The cabbie is accused of stealing it and winds up in court when she presses charges. The rest of the film deals with Fabrizi's attempts to prevent his daughter from marrying a taxi driver who uses a real car, not a horse-and-buggy. That's not traditional enough! At the end of the film the necklace is found, all is forgiven, the daughter's boyfriend becomes part of the family. Mario Mattoli, the director, made dozens of pleasantly vacuous films similar to this one throughout his long career.