The earliest film in our series shows how the comedy genre grew from roots in neorealism, using non-professional actors, location shooting (in Milan, Florence and Sicily), and dealing with the lives and woes of ordinary people to make comedy out of a desperate situation. Beppe Agosti, a carefree young man in love with love, unthinkingly allows himself to become a bigamist, but his troubles really begin when his two wives (one, a fiery Sicilian, the other a placid Milanese) meet. The plot looks ahead to the sexual conflagrations of the fifties films, which would have us believe that there are two types of Italian woman and one confounded type of man caught between them; but Castellani's brand of down-to-earth comedy is not yet interested in sexual typing. Non-professional actor Mario Angelotti invests Beppe Agosti with his own irresistible abandon, while on either side of our peripatetic hero, Elena Varzi and Irene Gemma as the wives evoke gently mocking renditions of stereo-typicality--not of gender, but of place. Castellani makes the most of the contrasting cities, with their different accents and manners, in his expert pacing. Castellani is best known for his classic Due Soldi di Speranza (Two Cents Worth of Hope), screening June 13.