Subject
The scene shown here, filmed along the Appia Antica, is taken from the 1956 film “La banda degli onesti” (The Band of Honest Men), directed by Camillo Mastrocinque and featuring Totò, Peppino De Filippo and Giacomo Furia. The three friends, having come into possession of a stolen money-printing plate, decide to begin counterfeit production. Antonio Bonocore (Totò), however, having learned from his son, a Financial Guard, that the police are seeking out counterfeiters, convinces his accomplices to desist. In reality, none of the three has had the courage to spend a single one of the false banknotes, and meeting at night along the Appia Antica, they decide to set a bonfire for the destruction of the suitcase with counterfeit banknotes and printing plates.
In this final scene, Antonio (Totò), Giuseppe Lo Turco (Peppino De Filippo) and Cardone (Giacomo Furia) arrive at the fifth mile of the Appia Antica. The location is near the slight curve in the ancient road for passage over the Fossae Cluiliae, the ditch separating the territories of the cities of Rome and Alba Longa and the purported site of battle between their respective champions, the Orazi and the Curiazi. Walking together, the three friends pass a tumulus of late Republican age surmounted by a cylindrical masonry body, traditionally known as the Tomb of the Curiatii, and pause at a two-story funerary monument known simply as Laterizio I, entirely clad in bricks in an elegant two-coloured design. During restorations under the direction of Luigi Canina in the mid-1800s, this monument, typical of the 2nd century AD, had numerous marble fragments walled into the façade. Many of these having been lost to theft, the voids were then filled with modern travertine pieces during further restorations along the Appia Antica, in 1999-2000. The iron gate seen behind the three “partners” closes what was once the burial cell of the tomb. With the bonfire lit, we see the cement core of a circular sepulchre with an addition of medieval construction in reused material, and again in the background, the Laterizio I tomb flanked by another tomb faced in brick, surmounted by a small medieval tower.
Director
Camillo Mastrocinque
Year
1956
