Peddlin' in Society (1946) User Reviews (4)

Good film, bad dubbing

[entomol71 · 7/10 · 27 January 2010]

Gioconda a greengrocer in Trastevere (Roma), accumulates a big account of money and decides to join the Roman middle-class society. After buying a huge town house confiscated to a Roman count during the war, she buys some pictures e some furnishes it elegantly, giving hospitality to the count. She also goes round with an old lady whom she believes a countess. Actually that countess is a French thief, who swindles Gioconda by selling her a false diamond. Gioconda finds out also the pictures she has bought are false. So, she is made to abandon that style of life and thanks the count because he has always given her good advices.

This is a gay "neorealist" film directed by Gennaro Righelli. It is based on a excellent interpretation by Anna Magnani. She acts the part of a Roman lady, dazzled by her rich financial position and convinced of changing her origin. Anna Magnani represent the part of Roman low extraction popular ladies better than other part. However she was very good at dramatic roles too, and she also had a notable theatrical experience. This film is excellence from all the points of view, but the dialogues are all dubbed and this is its drawback. The audio is not well synchronized in lots of scenes, above all in those ones where Gioconda sings. Although Anna Magnani dubs herself, we cannot feel the same attraction that we could with an original audio, including the background sounds (which Italian productions were allowed to eliminate). Thinking about that period, it has to be said that it was not possible for Italian actors playing in direct sound, and unfortunately Anna Magnani was made to be dubbed too. If the films of this period were called "neorealist" what sort of neorealism did they represent as to the sound?

Ill -gotten gains seldom prosper.

[ulicknormanowen · 8/10 · 22 December 2021]

La Magnani was an Italian wonder : she shines in her part of nouveau riche ,of parvenue greengrocer who made her fortune through black market during the war.

"I was born to be a noble ,to live in a desirable mansion, to be part of the aristocracy ". But what's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh :although she plays the grande dame, although she despises the people she was formerly part of, although she buys so called pictures of famous artists , although she makes friend with a so called marchioness,she remains a naive woman ,crude and gullible, who thinks that her sister will marry a would be young millionaire .The count (played by brilliant Vittorio De Sica ) ,although relegated in the basement ,will remain a count through and through .

In her luxury house ,it's a make believe world ; a prodigious snob, she does not realize how ludicrous she is with her two-bird hat;from rags to riches ,and from riches to rag best depicts this half-comedy half-drama story .

Blurb.

[ItalianGerry · 15 August 2001]

PEDDLIN' IN SOCIETY (the original title means "Down with Wealth!") is a tour-de-force for Anna Magnani as an erstwhile fruit vendor who finds herself in the lap of luxury when her black-market business pays off more handsomely. She leases an elegant villa from an impoverished count (the superb Vittorio De Sica), wears the most ridiculous hat ever seen in the Italian cinema, and finds out the hard way that instant wealth brings her neither class nor esteem but instead makes her easy prey for the unscrupulous. This thoroughly lightweight dramatic farce is a counterpoint to some of Magnani's much better films of that period: OPEN CITY, AMORE, and L'ONOREVOLE ANGELINA. Director Gennaro Righelli keeps it all going entertainingly. The film is a follow-up to ABBASSO LA MISERIA ("Down with Misery") which he had made with Magnani the year before.

The facts of life after the war from affluence to providence

[clanciai · 9/10 · 11 September 2021]

The main attraction of the film is to watch Anna Magnani and Vittorio de Sica act together, and they alone raise the film to some level of classical comedy. It is really a tragi-comedy, because Anna Magnani is outrageously rich from her black market business during the war, and she learns the hard way that money does not bring esteem or respectability but only makes you vulnerable to parasites and vultures. There are some hilarious ironic scenes in the den of the so called aristocrats, all frauds, who cheat her out of all her money by their sanctimoniously affected manners to cajole and trap her in their racket, they are all splendid caricatures of fake snobs and adulating freaks. Anna Magnani herself dominates the film by her overwhelmingly splendid acting, going from something of a queen and primadonna of smugglers to the real down to earth Anna Magnani with a firm realistic grip on the facts of life. The other great comedian of this film is John Garson as the fat Californian soldier Lucky Brandy (!), who adorns the film by his fluent Italian with a very American accent making it hilarious, especially for Italians, probably. Vittorio de Sica adds style to the film as the count whose palace she is renting and who also has to face sinister facts of reality. In the final scene the film suddenly turns romantic and beautiful, enhanced in charm by some lovely street musicians, illustrating the return to basic reality from the false illusions of a luxurious but meaningless and superficial life of delusions.