Underplayed Gems

La famiglia Passaguai (1951)

La famiglia Passaguai poster
Directed by
Aldo Fabrizi
Genre
comedy film
Country
Italy
Runtime
1h 30m
Rating
6.6 of 10 from 21 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
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How it feels

A lower middle-class family from Rome takes a day trip to the seaside. Misadventures and laughs follow as they deal with chaotic outings and their friends.

lightheartedwhimsicalcomedicenergeticplayfulnostalgicrelatable

What happens

The Passaguai Family (Italian: La Famiglia Passaguai) is a 1951 Italian comedy film written, starring and directed by Aldo Fabrizi. It also featured Peppino De Filippo, Ave Ninchi and Giovanna Ralli. It was followed by a sequel The Passaguai Family Gets Rich in 1952. It follows the misadventures of a lower middle-class family and their friends from Rome when they take a day's outing at the seaside. It was shot at the Ponti-De Laurentiis Studios in Rome and on location around the city and at the resort of Fiumicino at the mouth of the River Tiber near Ostia. Distributed by the Italian branch of the Rank Organisation it was a major hit, taking domestic box office earnings of 378 million lira. In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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