Franco Scaldati

In 1950s Sicily, con artist Joe Moretti does screen tests for the big studios, accepting money or favours for his efforts. A young illiterate novitiate named Beata desperately wants to change her life and falls for him; belatedly, he realizes his feelings for her. However, their love affair is doomed when he's arrested.

In the Sicily of the late 1940s, two brother sculptors, tired of selling madonnas to the local churches, finally realize their dream, and set up a Sicilian production company, thanks to the help of a local bishop. They start producing one box-office failure Z-movie after the other, all with terribly bad local non-pros as actors. Covered in debts, they finally have their great chance, when a local nobleman obsessed by magic decides to invest all his wealth in the making of a movie about Cagliostro, just one year after Orson Welles' Black Magic (1949). They hire a famous American actor (Robert Englund) and start shooting "The Return of Cagliostro".

A laborer sent into exile during the Fascist era for defending a beggar returns to his hometown after the armistice. He finds it in the throes of peasant revolts and soon becomes the leader of a gang wanted by both the Carabinieri and the Mafia.

Franco scaldati - died in 2013 - was one of the most important autors of italian theatre plays, Maresco describes his role in the cultural and social field. Through his opera we can observe Italy from another point of view.

Adapted from Franco Scaldati's play, the movie transposes the story of Totò and Vicé from the theatrical representations to urban scenes. Totò and Vicé are timeless creatures, bewildered and misplaced, that roam about Palermo, marooned and empty; an urban journey and waking life between memories and dreams in one magic night. Out from a timeless cave, their story of sanctification crosses the suburbs, reaches the city and it's bowels, showing the real settings of Scaldati's writing and cosmogony.