Totò's first film brought to the screen the kinds of sketches that had made him so popular on stage. His gags were instantly cinematic in their energy and rhythm, and elements of his persona-the hapless hero's vaguely aristocratic roots, the crossdressing, the insatiable hunger-already in place. Looking for work, Totò the vagabond gets a job at a beauty parlor disguised as a woman; he is discovered after giving a famous singer a massage. Later, he goes to the theater where the singer is performing, somehow becomes the orchestra conductor, and makes her show into a big hit. The Totò-Charlot link is conveyed by a Kid-like sidekick (Miranda Bonansea Garvaglia, Italy's answer to Shirley Temple). But more than that, as Freddy Buache noted, is the film's pre-neorealist sensibility that invites us to think about the connections not only of Totò but of Chaplin to that movement.