Probably no Italian comedy director deals as consistently, or as well, with disillusionment and dignity as Mario Monicelli. A Passionate Thief takes the themes of Big Deal on Madonna Street and The Great War out of the ghetto or the battlefield and into the arena of cinema itself in depicting the failed illusions of two broken-down bit-players at Cinecittà. In an adaptation of two novels by Moravia, the marvelous Anna Magnani portrays a hapless would-be actress who becomes implicated in a theft by a retired extra (Totò) and a young pickpocket (Ben Gazzara) with whom she falls in love.