Il trapianto (1970)

User Rating:

3.5/10   

Director:

Steno

Writers:

Nino Longobardi (screenplay)
Nino Longobardi (story)

Genre:

Comedy

Cast

Carlo Giuffrè	...	Barone Ferruccio di Filaruta
Renato Rascel	...	Dario Barbieri
Graziella Granata	...	Angelina - Turi's wife
Liana Trouche	...	Adele Barbieri
Roberto Camardiel	...	Don Liborio - the priest
Gabriella Giorgelli	...	Carmela
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Rafael Alonso	...	Don Ferdinando
Fernando Bilbao
Feodor Chaliapin Jr.	...	Don Calogero
Giovanni Cori
Sandro Dori	...	The Short Envoy of the Weisses-Kreuz Klinik
Adriana Facchetti	...	Dario's Mother-in-law
Carmelo Finocchiaro
Alberto Fogliani	...	Ferruccio's Creditor
William Layton	...	Professor Schirmer
Francesco Leone
Malisa Longo	...	Maddalena
Renzo Marignano	...	The tall Envoy of the Weisses-Kreuz Klinik
Gerlando Martelli	...	Rocco Brustolon
Enrique Navarro
Pino Patti	...	Dottor Hinkel
Vicente Roca	...	Turi - the mayor
Carlos Rossi
Fernando Sánchez Polack
Franca Sciutto
Vicente Soler
Maria Tasso
Gaetano Tomaselli
Karen Valenti	...	Margherita - Ferdinando's wife
Richard Watson	...	Mister Fletcher

Also Known As:

Transplant (USA)
Trasplante a la italiana (Spain)

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

Italy | Spain

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Company:

DIA P.C.

TRANSPLANT (Steno, 1970) **1/2

Grotesque, crude but often quite funny knockabout farce which outstays its welcome and does not always fully realize its satirical aspirations. The film deals with an American billionaire, who having married a luscious young wife some 50 years his junior, often breaks into sobbing fits at the sight of her; it does not take long for us to learn that all is not well between them in the bedroom stakes and he decides (with the aid of a computer and a coterie of advisers) to have an organ transplant. No prizes in guessing which organ he is needful of...!

After a series of false starts, they arrive to the three final prospective candidates, all of which are, coincidentally, Italian. One is an idiotic but clearly well-endowed brute who, having been "gang-raped" by a group of Swedish female sunbathers, wants nothing else except to go back for more, another is an unassuming family man who happens to have 14 kids and is constantly being harassed by his avaricious relatives into accepting the "job" and, thirdly, a nouveau pauvre Sicilian aristocrat who spends the time dodging his creditors by day and bedding their wives by night! They are put to several strenuous tests to prove their maximum virility during the course of which they naturally start having second thoughts about going through with the operation...

The film, co-written by popular Italian comic and latter-day TV personality Raimondo Vianello, stars Carlo Giuffre' as the impoverished Latin Lover and the diminutive Renato Rascel who, playing the mild-mannered but prodigious father, has much more screen time than his "Special Guest Star" billing would suggest. Director Steno (real name Stefano Vanzina) was an expert handler of comics having dealt with the likes of Toto', Alberto Sordi, Nino Manfredi, Paolo Villaggio, Terence Hill, Bud Spencer, etc. - not to mention such Hollywood legends as Gloria Swanson, Orson Welles, Christopher Lee and Peter Ustinov! - throughout his long and distinguished film career.