Mani di velluto
| Velvet Hands (Mani di velluto) |
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|---|---|
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| Directed by | Castellano & Pipolo (Franco Castellano & Giuseppe Moccia) |
| Produced by | Mario Cecchi Gori |
| Written by | Castellano & Pipolo |
| Starring | Adriano Celentano |
| Music by | Nando De Luca |
| Cinematography | Alfio Contini |
| Edited by | Antonio Siciliano |
| Distributed by | Cecchi Gori Group |
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Release date
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1979 |
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Running time
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100 min |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
Mani di velluto, internationally released as Velvet Hands, is a 1979 Italian comedy film directed by Castellano & Pipolo. For this film Adriano Celentano was awarded with a David di Donatello for Best Actor. The film also won the David di Donatello for Best Producer.
Adriano Celentano performs the role of Guido Quiller, the inventor and main patent propietor of a virtually indestructible type of armored glass which is used to secure jewelry shop windows. The success of this merchandise occurs at the chagrin of several influential insurance companies, chiefly the La Suisse Assurance in Geneva, who see their winnings from one of their most profitable income niches dwindling, and they attempt to gain the patent to the invention and then get rid of it altogether. As it so happens, Guido lives enstranged from his wife Petula, the other patent holder to the glass, who would be more accessible to the insurance companies' offers. Her condition for the divorce from Guido would be that he should transfer all his exclusive rights to the production of the Quiller glass - and thereby his whole fortune - to her, whereupon she would sell them to the Swiss Assurance and gain a princely monetary compensation in return.
The day Guido announces the news that he would lose all his money to his wife, his young lover Maggie leaves him as she was only after his money. As he races after Maggie on a defective Vespa to return her handbag she had accidentally left behind, Guido attracts the attention of Tilli, a pickpocket working the local subways who has a passion for horoscopes and Arsene Lupin, and her brother Momo, a bumbling counterfeiter, two members of a family clan of petty criminals. Their grandfather had a short time earlier attempted to break into a jewelry shop window, only to be thwarted by the Quiller glass, and was arrested by the police. When Guido crashes into a fountain, Tilli and Momo, thinking that he is a fellow thief, take him to their home; but his involuntary bath has infected Guido with laryngitis, rendering him temporarily mute and thus unable to identify himself.
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Wikipedia