L'armata Brancaleone
| L'armata Brancaleone | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Mario Monicelli |
| Produced by | Mario Cecchi Gori |
| Written by |
Agenore Incrocci Furio Scarpelli Mario Monicelli |
| Starring |
Vittorio Gassman Gian Maria Volontè Catherine Spaak Carlo Pisacane Luigi Sangiorgi Ugo Fangareggi Folco Lulli Enrico Maria Salerno Maria Grazia Buccella Barbara Steele Joaquín Díaz |
| Music by | Carlo Rustichelli |
| Distributed by | Titanus Film |
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Release date
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Running time
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120 minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
L'armata Brancaleone (known in English-speaking countries as For Love and Gold or The Incredible Army of Brancaleone) is an Italian comedy movie released in 1966, written by the famous duo Age & Scarpelli and directed by Mario Monicelli. It features Vittorio Gassman in the main role. It was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.
The term Armata Brancaleone is still used today in Italian to define a group of badly assembled and useless people. Brancaleone is an actual historical name, meaning the paw of lions in heraldry jargon. Brancaleone degli Andalò was a governor of Rome in the Middle Ages.
The movie opens with a small Italian village being stormed by a band of Hungarian pillagers. When the murders and rapes are over, a German knight arrives and bravely kills the bandits. However, as he is healing his wounds he is attacked by two of the surviving villagers and one of the thieves. They throw the wounded knight into a river.
The attackers try to sell the knight's armor and weapons to a miserly Jewish merchant who finds among his belongings a letter of donation by the Holy Roman Emperor, granting the knight the fief of Aurocastro, an Apulian town. The parchment is torn at the lower end, which refers to a condition the knight must fulfill to enjoy the donation.
The Hungarian bandit comes up with the idea to propose a partnership to a cadet nobleman, so the group can take possession of the aforementioned fief and enjoy its riches. The knight they find is the poor and incompetent, yet well-meaning, Brancaleone da Norcia and they tell him that a noble knight handed them the parchment before dying. Brancaleone initially refuses the plan but after a farcical defeat at a jousting tournament that promised the hand of an overlord's daughter and a wealthy fief, he is too eager to take command of this "army" (L'Armata) of underdogs and lead it towards "fortune" and "glory", in what he sees as an epic journey.
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Wikipedia