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GIFFONI FILM FESTIVAL 1983 - 30 July.7 August

Sections & Films

BE GOOD, IF YOU CAN

Category: Edition 1983

Synopsis
Around the year 1500, the Italian priest Don Filippo Neri helps street kids and orphans in his poor little chapel. He is no clergyman by the book, but a true believer in terms good and bad and he teaches this to his children. Neri is not very well-seen by the church and his only "friend" is the dry, humorless Ignatius De Loyola. But Neris real counterpart is the devil himself, working in endless incarnations in Neris direct neighborhood, trying to seduce his kids. His newest kid is the young thief Cirifischio, making a lot of problems. When Cirifischio has an argument with a young boy of a local aristocrat, the boy turns out to be a girl, the young Leonetta, some kind of a sex slave for her owner. Neri adopts her too, and the young people fall in love. 15 Years later, the devil is back and leads Cirifiscio onto a murder. Now lawless, the thief must flee Neri and leave Leonetta back. Neri does the best he can to save the thief's life, but does he have a chance against the fate? ...

Original Title State buoni… se potete
Italian Title State buoni… se potete
Category Out of competition
Section 4 Faces of Children for 4 Directors
Tipology Feature Film
Duration 115'
Production Year 1983
Nationality Italy
Directed by Luigi Magni
Screenplay Luigi Magni
Music Angelo Branduardi
Main cast Johnny Dorelli, Philippe Leroy, Rodolfo Bigotti

 regista luigi magniLUIGI MAGNI

He began his career as a writer and subject writer in collaboration with Age & Scarpelli. In 1956 he finally settled in the world of cinema working with the most important Italian directors of the time: Mario Monicelli, Luciano Salce, Mauro Bolognini, Camillo Mastrocinque, Giorgio Bianchi, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Carlo Lizzani and Alberto Lattuada.
In 1968 he moved behind the camera directing Vonetta McGee, Enzo Cerusico and Renzo Montagnani in the comedy Faustina. But the success will come to Magni with his second work, In the Year of the Lord (1969), the film that outlines his trademark: comedies set in the papal and Risorgimento Rome, swaying between the farcical and the dramatic, not forgetting the exquisitely "Roman" language. From this film begins the collaboration of Luigi Magni with Nino Manfredi.
After La Tosca (1973) with Monica Vitti, In the name of Papa Re (1977) he won the David di Donatello for the best screenplay.