Big Deal on Madonna Street

A hapless small-time Roman crook, Cosimo, is arrested for a bungled car theft and sentenced to a few months in prison. He harangues his girlfriend and lawyer to get him released so he can carry out a heist idea stolen from another inmate, a dishonest bricklayer who purposely constructed a flimsy wall between a pawn shop safe and an adjacent vacant apartment. Ultimately, Cosimo's gang bribes Peppe, a boxer with a clean criminal record, to confess, but the warden does not believe Peppe, and he ends up in jail alongside Cosimo. Peppe tells Cosimo that he has been sentenced to three long years for Cosimo's offense. To justify his actions, Cosimo, explains the details of the pawn shop heist to Peppe. Peppe then gleefully reveals that he was only given a year's probation and walks out of the prison gate, infuriating Cosimo. Peppe takes up the heist plan with Cosimo's gang: Mario, a petty thief and the youngest member of the group; Michele, a posturing Sicilian crook who needs money for his sheltered sister's dowry; Tiberio, a down and out photographer caring for his baby while his wife is in jail on a minor offense; and Capannelle, an elderly pickpocket. Tiberio steals a movie camera from a flea market and attempts to film the combination to the pawn shop safe with a telephoto lens, but without success. Since none involved have the skill to crack the safe, they enlist the help of genteel local safe cracker Dante, who is careful not to violate his parole but supplies tools and gives them a brief primer. The gang soon discovers the vacant apartment is occupied by two spinsters and their young maid, Nicoletta. Ladies' man Peppe learns from Nicoletta that the two older women leave the apartment overnight once a week. Peppe earns the offer of a tryst with the maid the next time the ladies leave. The rest of the group pressures him to accept so they can stage the burglary, but Nicoletta unexpectedly quits her job in a huff, and does not know if the spinsters will make their weekly departure. Meanwhile, Cosimo is released from prison. As the plan's mastermind, he had demanded a substantial portion of the loot but was rebuffed. He vows vengeance on the group by preemptively robbing the pawn shop at gunpoint, but the blasé pawnbroker assumes Cosimo wants to hock his gun. Deflated, Cosimo leaves, but during a botched purse snatching he is hit and killed by a streetcar. Mario has fallen for Michele's sister, Carmelina, and quits the caper for fear of being caught and embarrassing his mother. He vows to pursue a straight life and court Carmelina. To participate in the robbery, Tiberio deposits his baby with his wife, who is in prison. He runs into the flea market proprietor, who breaks his arm for stealing the movie camera. The group's fortunes brighten, however, when the apartment's elderly occupants take their weekly trip after all. Re-energized, the gang breaks into the apartment and, after some setbacks, succeed in breaking through the wall they think leads to the pawnshop. But the wall leads into the apartment's kitchen; the elderly women had rearranged the furniture, thus disorienting the gang. Realizing they have little time left until morning, they resignedly gather round the apartment's kitchen table and raid the refrigerator. Their repast ends abruptly when ever-starved Capannelle blows up the stove while lighting one of its burners. Thwarted, they all straggle homeward, peeling off one by one for streetcars until only Peppe and Capanelle are left. Peppe then surprises Capannelle by deciding to find legitimate work. A newspaper article later recounts a robbery by unknown persons who apparently broke into an apartment just to steal pasta with chickpeas.

Plot from Big Deal on Madonna StreetCC BY-SA 4.0