Probably no Italian comedy director deals as consistently, or as well, with disillusionment and dignity as Mario Monicelli. Risate di Gioia follows on the heels of Big Deal on Madonna Street and La Grande Guerra, taking the theme 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 Cinecitta. 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.