CIRCOLO AGORA’: “In memory of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia” is the title of the new conversation

The “L’Agorà” Cultural Circle remotely organizes a new remote meeting on “In memory of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia”, a topic that will be dealt with by Antonino Megali (vice president of the organizing association). The meeting, organized by the “L’Agorà” cultural club, received the patronage of the Municipality of Palermo and the Metropolitan City of Palermo. Franchi and Ingrassia began to appear in a long series of film productions initially in supporting roles. They made their debut as protagonists in “The Honored Society”, whose moderate success (over 300 million in collections) showed the commercial potential of the couple. Vittorio De Sica also took part in the film, who agreed to participate on condition that he had the couple in his film “The Last Judgment”; despite the notable cast, the film turned out to be a flop, so much so that the distribution ran for cover, then trying to pass off the film as a film with Franco and Ciccio as protagonists, advertising it with the slogan “Ciccio and Franco in the Last Judgment, the most comical film of the ‘year”. The real success came with “The Two of the Legion” – directed by Lucio Fulci at the beginning and who will then direct another twelve films of the couple – Titanus spent about 100 million lire on the production and collected over 430. The success earned Franco and Ciccio the nickname of “golden couple ”. In 1963 the producer Edmondo Amati, who had at his disposal some archival footage of stripteases made in Parisian night-clubs and wanted to make them more interesting by adding the comic presence of Franchi and Ingrassia, proposed to the director Giorgio Simonelli to sign the film, entitled provisional”Two Sicilians in Paris”; however, the director convinced the producer to change the subject, managing to carve out a central space for their comedy; from this change of register a series was born that had great success both in Italy and abroad with films such as “The two mobstersparody of “mobster” of Lattuada and which collected almost one billion lire, followed by “Two mobsters in the Far West”“Two mobsters against Goldginger” (both above one billion) and “2 mobsters against Al Capone” (over seven hundred million). In 1963 the couple released their contract with Modugno by agreeing to appear for free in his directorial debut, “Everything is music” and began the collaboration with the agent Alfredo Adami. Throughout the 1960s, takings remained high (around 500-800 million lire per film), often with tight production times (even as little as three weeks for “Don Franco and Don Ciccio in the year of the protest” of 1970). Their collaboration began in 1954 and ended with Franchi’s death in 1992. The couple made their film debut in 1960 with the film “Appointment in Ischia”in which they were launched by Modugno who, after seeing them, wanted them with him in his film, and remained active until 1984 when they shot their last film together, “chaos”even if there were interruptions in 1973 and from 1975 to 1980. Taking into account the anti-contagion safety protocols and the fluctuating results of the COVID 19 pandemic and in compliance with the DPCM regulations of 24 October 2020, the conversation will be available, on various Social Network platforms present on the web, starting from Friday 16 December.