Big Deal on Madonna Street

Big Deal on Madonna Street Italian I soliti ignoti , also released as Persons Unknown in the UK is a 1958 Italian criminalcomedy film, directed by Mario Monicelli, and considered to be among the masterpieces of Italian cinema. Its original title translates as the usual unknown persons, a journalistic and bureaucratic euphemism for unidentified criminals. The film is a comedy about a group of smalltime thieves and neerdowells who bungle an attempt to burgle a staterun pawn shop Monte di Piet in Italian in Rome.

A Roman smalltime crook, Cosimo, is arrested for the attempted theft of a car. After he is convicted and put in prison, he starts haranguing his girlfriend and former accomplices by telling them that he has a plan for a heist but that he needs their help to be freed. In order to assure his release, they find an acquaintance named Peppe Vittorio Gassman with a clean criminal record to take the blame for the theft in the hope that the police will release Cosimo. They instead have both of them jailed. While Peppe is in jail, Cosimo tells him the plans for the heist of a safe in a pawnshop. Peppe then reveals that he got off merely with probation, leaving him free to pursue the heist without Cosimo, much to his chagrin.The heist entails the following as the pawnshop is adjacent to a vacant apartment, they must first break into a small courtyard, climb onto the roof of another small apartment, and break in through a window of the vacant home. To accomplish this, they enlist the help of another local thief Tot that is an expert on safes who tells them of a plan to silence the alarm of the safe that they may break into it safely. While everything is planned, they discover that the vacant apartment has just become occupied by two spinsters and their young, attractive maid. Peppe learns from the young maid, with whom he flirts, that the two women never leave their apartment but for a day a week, on Thursday, when they go and visit a country cottage they own, spending the night there and not being back until Friday noon. After arranging a date with the girl on this particular day, the group is distressed to learn that she has quit her job and the women may in fact be there on Thursday night. ........

Source: Wikipedia