User Reviews

This comedy shows how people shouldn't hurry to make serious things, (like getting married, for instance). In this movie, the "odyssey" of a rich-becoming man to find a wife who "helps" him to inherit a fortune is showed with great efficiency. The lots of problems that appear in an apparently simple task like searching for a wife to become rich shows this is not as easy as it may seem, and you can see there that money doesn't always bring happiness, until it's come.

By the way, I must say that I saw this movie on TV when I was in Italy last month, otherwise I think I couldn't have seen it. But that's the best way to watch a movie like this: Totò's comicity is better in O. V.

Toto' a struggling artist, and confirmed bachelor, has just received word from his aunt in Australia, that he will come across a small fortune.

But in order to collect, he must be married. So Toto' must quickly tie the knot or lose the money. All this is easier said than done.

The first girl in his sight is very beautiful, but she is also very near-sighted, like every one else in her family. So Toto', to fit in, dons a pair of glasses and wreaks havoc as a result.

First, he bumps into the door. Then he pours himself a glass of wine, not knowing that the bottle is empty. Of course he notices that the wine is very dry.

India ink is mistaken for red wine (remember that the movie is in black and white) and all havoc really breaks lose.

(The scene, with everybody bumping into each other and doing everything wrong because of their visual handicap, would offend those who are "politically correct", but when this movie was released, in 1950, "political correctness" was non-existent. So sit back and enjoy. It is worth the price of the movie, alone!)

Later pursuits are just as disastrous!

His classified ad is erroneous printed, causing even more havoc.

When the mess is finally straightened out, the situation really gets out of hand because he must now face a crowd of eligible women, all ready to chase him to the church where each one hopes to become "La moglie di Toto'" (Toto's wife).

This movie is a "must see", even though it hasn't been (to my knowledge) ever translated into English.

Toto' was a comic genius whose brand of humor could be comparable to a blend of "Charlie Chaplin slapstick" "3 Stooges lunacy" mixed with the sharp wit of Groucho Marx. Yet he maintains his own unique brand of originality.