"Marito e moglie" (Husband and Wife) is a two-episode look at married life from the sometimes caustic eye of director Eduardo De Filippo. In the first of them, based on Guy De Maupassant's story "Tonio," Don Matteo (De Filippo) plays an old codger who is confined to bed because of paralysis and is married to a shrewish and greedy woman, Donna Rosalia, played by Tina Pica. She also raises chickens. They are her passion. When the chickens fall victim to an illness, she enlists the help of her husband to keep the eggs warm for hatching. Hubby says no to the indignity of being mother hen, and wifey denies him food until hunger forces him to cooperate and the chicks are born and a new livelihood is guaranteed.
In the second story, based on De Filippo's own Neapolitan one-acter "Gennarriello," De Filippo is Gennarino, an amateur inventor disgusted with his caustic wife Concetta, played by Titina De Filippo. He is burdened too by a spinster sister (Tina Pica) and an idiot son, and yearns for something better and falls secretly in love with the pretty young girl who lives across the way. He loses control one day, plies the young miss with kisses galore and is nabbed by his wife. In the end all is forgiven and the marriage salvaged.
The film is very pleasant to watch, especially in the interplay between such great comic actors of the Neapolitan theatre like Eduardo and Titina De Filippo and the inimitable Tina Pica.
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