There’s an Italian film from the late 1990s that divides audiences, unsettles, and never leaves you indifferent: Totò che visse due volte (1998), directed by Daniele Ciprì and Franco Maresco. It’s not for everyone, but maybe for those who want to be provoked, challenged, who don’t settle for comforting views. If you haven’t seen it, this article might push you to seek it out. Let me tell you why.

Plot and Structure: What Happens in Totò che visse due volte

The film is composed of three distinct episodes, numbered but untitled, which then converge, mirror one another, reflect each other.

Here is a quick summary:

1. First Episode: Focuses on Paletta, a man mocked, humiliated, frustrated. He lives in poverty, with sexual desires that are repressed or unfulfilled, and he at least seeks escape through imagination, through acts that verge on the obscene, on self-indulgence. The arrival of Tremmotori (the prostitute) kindles passions, triggering a sacrilegious theft from a votive shrine of the Ecce Homo, with terrible consequences.

2. Second Episode: Revolves around the death of a middle-aged homosexual man. There’s the mother, there’s Fefè (the lover), there’s familial tension with the brother Bastiano. It’s more intimate, working with memories, regrets, the fear of judgement (societal, moral, religious), but also subtler impulses: the need to possess something belonging to another (the ring), the relationship with the body, desire, guilt.

3. Third Episode: Perhaps the thematic heart of the film. A Totò as Messiah appears, also Don Totò (the mafia boss) — the duality of good/evil, power, faith, vengeance, redemption, death, resurrection. Boss Lazzaro is dissolved in acid; the Messiah is asked to bring him back to life; there are strong visual, grotesque scenes up to a crucifixion at the end, with religious symbols used in their most physical, raw form.

Importantly, the film isn’t a “religious work” in the comforting sense: it does not aim to destroy faith, but to put it under scrutiny, to show what happens when institutions, power, material and spiritual poverty collide.

Psychology Behind the Film: Themes, Symbolism, Worldview

The film is loaded with psychological tension, metaphors, symbols. It’s not just about showing ugliness; it’s about finding in the ugly a truth about being human.

Main Themes

The Death of God: Not so much in an abstract theological sense, but as loss of authority, of meaning, of moral values that still function. God, or religion, is present—but distorted, instrumentalized, in conflict with the reality of poverty, of the mafia, of unresolved desire.

Nihilism and Pessimism: There seems to be a resigned, painful surrender to the worst, to instinct, to survival. The humanity shown is often degraded, brutalized, suffering. There is no manifest hope, but the cry is there.

Grotesque and Deformation: Characters are grotesque not for mere spectacle, but to make tangible dehumanization, obsession, fear; to make visible the liminal zone between man and monster, between sacred and profane.

Religion as Ritual, Institution, Corruption: Forms of the sacred (cross, Messiah, resurrection, votive statuettes, religious symbols) are used in a disturbing way to show how religion can be at once comfort and oppression, hope betrayed and violence.

The Role of Desire: Sexuality, Drives: The first episode is almost entirely devoted to sexual desire repressed, to desire in conflict with morality, to desire that ruins, transgresses, that becomes violence. The confusion between instinct and meaning.

Psychology of the Characters

Paletta appears as an outcast. Not just a passive victim, but a man who has lost his dignity and looks, even if in broken ways, for balance. His sacrilegious theft is symbolic: not only does he desire, but he desecrates the religious, as protest, as desperate impulse.

Fefè, the lover, is a character of regret, guilt, longing for contact. Even if his love is already ended (or death has already arrived), he lives in memories, in remorse, in personal and familial tensions.

Totò / Don Totò: Central figure, double, in contrast. A fallen Messiah, almost human, who carries the burden of salvation without having true authority. Don Totò represents earthly power, mafia, destructive; the Messiah Totò that desire for redemption, but also incomplete, mixed with humanity, fallibility.

Symbolism and Aesthetic Influence

Black & white cinematography: Enhances contrast, desolation, the dirty materiality, light and shadow not just visually but as metaphor of struggle between flesh and spirit, between hope and abyss.

Urban and marginal landscapes of Palermo: A space both real and metaphorical, atmosphere of ending, of something decomposing. Humans entrapped in dirt, mafia, degraded religion.

Use of the grotesque: Extreme scenes (violence, sex, blasphemies, profaned sacred images) not only for shock but to reflect a truth that otherwise remains under-threshold, invisible. To force spectator to look at the horrid as mirror of what is unsaid, ignored, repressed.

Awards, Merits, Controversies, and Cultural Context

It’s not just a “difficult” film: it became a case.

The film had candidacies for the Nastri d’Argento (for Best Editing for Ciprì and Maresco, in 1999).

It won an award for cinematography, by Luca Bigazzi, at Sitges (“Best Cinematography”) in 1998.

It was presented at the Berlinale in 1998, where it drew international critical attention for its visionary style.

Censorship and Polemics

Shortly after its presentation in international festivals, the film was subject to preventive censorship in Italy: it was initially banned, not authorized for theatrical release. Only on appeal did it gain clearance, but with a 18+ age restriction.

The controversy was strong, particularly from religious/Catholic groups who accused the directors of blasphemy, vilification of religion, misuse of sacred symbols, etc.—often without having seen the film in full, relying on descriptions, reviews, hearsay.

It is remembered as the last Italian film heavily affected by preventive censorship, in the sense that afterwards there was a shift in cultural and legal debates about how far the State can block a work aimed at adult viewers.

Restoration

In 2019 the film was restored in 4K by the Cineteca di Bologna, at the Laboratorio L’Immagine Ritrovata, supervised for color correction by Luca Bigazzi.

The restoration was realized from the original camera negatives and audio negatives conserved by the Istituto Luce – Cinecittà.

After the restoration, the film has been re-screened, including special events in Palermo.

Inspirations, Influences, and Title

The title Totò che visse due volte is inspired by the Italian title of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (La donna che visse due volte). The resemblance is more than wordplay: there is the idea of the double, of resurrection, of altered perception of reality.

Ciprì and Maresco come from Cinico TV, a television format already experimental, grotesque, where Sicily was represented in raw, deformed ways, but heavy with dark, poetic power. Many of the atmospheres in Totò che visse due volte derive from that experience.

Literary & philosophical influences: one sees connections to nihilism, to the loss of the sacred, to existential angst; echoes of Pasolini (institutional corruption, violence, religion as social structure) and Buñuel (surrealism, satire of the sacred, the grotesque).

Also, according to Maresco, there’s a dimension of existential science fiction—not in the usual visual sense (no robots etc.)—but in the atmospheres, in suggesting that the end for the human being has already begun, that technology, social mutation, loss of faith are leading towards a scenario where “man as we knew him” is at a stopping point.

Why Watch It: What It Leaves Behind

Because it is not hagiographic nor comforting: it’s a work that forces you to look at what we often ignore, to confront your fears, your faith, or lack thereof, with moral bourgeoisies, with misery, with pain.

Because the aesthetic: Mattography (Bigazzi), visual constructions, black & white, use of silence, of disturbing sound, of hallucinatory scenes — all contribute to making the experience memorable.

Because it’s a piece of Italian cinema that has been a watershed: pushed the limits of censorship, sparked debates not only aesthetic but moral, political, religious.

For those who love cinema that isn’t afraid to expose itself, that doesn’t look for ease, that accepts being disturbed.

Criticisms, Weaknesses, Reception

Of course not everyone loves it:

Some viewers find it too extreme, vulgar, gratuitous in certain scenes.

Some believe the second part is less effective compared to the first and third episodes, as if the rhythm slips, or the message gets diluted.

Commercially: very modest box office. It circulated in few theaters. The distribution was limited.

Filming Locations: Where the Film Was Shot

Here are some of the known locations where Totò che visse due volte was filmed—real places that help ground its surreal, grotesque, apocalyptic vision:

Palermo: Many scenes are set in Palermo.

The votive shrine (edicola votiva) robbed by Paletta to pay the prostitute is located in Via San Giacomo alla Guilla, Palermo.

Paletta’s house is in a courtyard known as “U Bagghiu S. Giovannuzzu” in Palermo.

The road that Fefè (Carlo Giordano) walks with friends to visit the deceased Pitrinu is along Lungofiume Via Mario Adorno, Palermo.

The beach where Fefè imagines dancing with Pitrinu (Pietro Arcidiacono) is the Arenella beach near Via Bordonaro, Palermo.

Poggioreale (Trapani), old Poggioreale: The site of the scene in which Pitrinu’s father knocks a man out with a candle and steals the gold of the deceased — in the old Poggioreale.

These real locations contribute a lot: the decaying architecture, the forgotten neighbourhoods, the coastal decay, all feed into the feeling of ruin and spiritual abandonment that the film evokes.

Conclusion

Totò che visse due volte is a film you don’t easily forget. It isn’t “light” nor comfortable, but it is powerful. If you are willing to challenge yourself — as a spectator, as a human being seeking meaning, beauty, truth — this film is an opportunity.

I encourage you to watch it not just as a cinematic experience, but as a questioning: what does it mean to believe? what does losing faith feel like? what does it mean to have hope in a world that seems forsaken? Where does sacred end and human brutality begin?

There’s an Italian film from the late 1990s that divides audiences, unsettles, and never leaves you indifferent: Totò che visse due volte (1998), directed by Daniele Ciprì and Franco Maresco. It’s not for everyone, but maybe for those who want to be provoked, challenged, who don’t settle for comforting views. If you haven’t seen it, this article might push you to seek it out. Let me tell you why.

Plot and Structure: What Happens in Totò che visse due volte

The film is composed of three distinct episodes, numbered but untitled, which then converge, mirror one another, reflect each other.

Here is a quick summary:

1. First Episode: Focuses on Paletta, a man mocked, humiliated, frustrated. He lives in poverty, with sexual desires that are repressed or unfulfilled, and he at least seeks escape through imagination, through acts that verge on the obscene, on self-indulgence. The arrival of Tremmotori (the prostitute) kindles passions, triggering a sacrilegious theft from a votive shrine of the Ecce Homo, with terrible consequences.

2. Second Episode: Revolves around the death of a middle-aged homosexual man. There’s the mother, there’s Fefè (the lover), there’s familial tension with the brother Bastiano. It’s more intimate, working with memories, regrets, the fear of judgement (societal, moral, religious), but also subtler impulses: the need to possess something belonging to another (the ring), the relationship with the body, desire, guilt.

3. Third Episode: Perhaps the thematic heart of the film. A Totò as Messiah appears, also Don Totò (the mafia boss) — the duality of good/evil, power, faith, vengeance, redemption, death, resurrection. Boss Lazzaro is dissolved in acid; the Messiah is asked to bring him back to life; there are strong visual, grotesque scenes up to a crucifixion at the end, with religious symbols used in their most physical, raw form.

Importantly, the film isn’t a “religious work” in the comforting sense: it does not aim to destroy faith, but to put it under scrutiny, to show what happens when institutions, power, material and spiritual poverty collide.

Psychology Behind the Film: Themes, Symbolism, Worldview

The film is loaded with psychological tension, metaphors, symbols. It’s not just about showing ugliness; it’s about finding in the ugly a truth about being human.

Main Themes

The Death of God: Not so much in an abstract theological sense, but as loss of authority, of meaning, of moral values that still function. God, or religion, is present—but distorted, instrumentalized, in conflict with the reality of poverty, of the mafia, of unresolved desire.

Nihilism and Pessimism: There seems to be a resigned, painful surrender to the worst, to instinct, to survival. The humanity shown is often degraded, brutalized, suffering. There is no manifest hope, but the cry is there.

Grotesque and Deformation: Characters are grotesque not for mere spectacle, but to make tangible dehumanization, obsession, fear; to make visible the liminal zone between man and monster, between sacred and profane.

Religion as Ritual, Institution, Corruption: Forms of the sacred (cross, Messiah, resurrection, votive statuettes, religious symbols) are used in a disturbing way to show how religion can be at once comfort and oppression, hope betrayed and violence.

The Role of Desire: Sexuality, Drives: The first episode is almost entirely devoted to sexual desire repressed, to desire in conflict with morality, to desire that ruins, transgresses, that becomes violence. The confusion between instinct and meaning.

Psychology of the Characters

Paletta appears as an outcast. Not just a passive victim, but a man who has lost his dignity and looks, even if in broken ways, for balance. His sacrilegious theft is symbolic: not only does he desire, but he desecrates the religious, as protest, as desperate impulse.

Fefè, the lover, is a character of regret, guilt, longing for contact. Even if his love is already ended (or death has already arrived), he lives in memories, in remorse, in personal and familial tensions.

Totò / Don Totò: Central figure, double, in contrast. A fallen Messiah, almost human, who carries the burden of salvation without having true authority. Don Totò represents earthly power, mafia, destructive; the Messiah Totò that desire for redemption, but also incomplete, mixed with humanity, fallibility.

Symbolism and Aesthetic Influence

Black & white cinematography: Enhances contrast, desolation, the dirty materiality, light and shadow not just visually but as metaphor of struggle between flesh and spirit, between hope and abyss.

Urban and marginal landscapes of Palermo: A space both real and metaphorical, atmosphere of ending, of something decomposing. Humans entrapped in dirt, mafia, degraded religion.

Use of the grotesque: Extreme scenes (violence, sex, blasphemies, profaned sacred images) not only for shock but to reflect a truth that otherwise remains under-threshold, invisible. To force spectator to look at the horrid as mirror of what is unsaid, ignored, repressed.

Awards, Merits, Controversies, and Cultural Context

It’s not just a “difficult” film: it became a case.

The film had candidacies for the Nastri d’Argento (for Best Editing for Ciprì and Maresco, in 1999).

It won an award for cinematography, by Luca Bigazzi, at Sitges (“Best Cinematography”) in 1998.

It was presented at the Berlinale in 1998, where it drew international critical attention for its visionary style.

Censorship and Polemics

Shortly after its presentation in international festivals, the film was subject to preventive censorship in Italy: it was initially banned, not authorized for theatrical release. Only on appeal did it gain clearance, but with a 18+ age restriction.

The controversy was strong, particularly from religious/Catholic groups who accused the directors of blasphemy, vilification of religion, misuse of sacred symbols, etc.—often without having seen the film in full, relying on descriptions, reviews, hearsay.

It is remembered as the last Italian film heavily affected by preventive censorship, in the sense that afterwards there was a shift in cultural and legal debates about how far the State can block a work aimed at adult viewers.

Restoration

In 2019 the film was restored in 4K by the Cineteca di Bologna, at the Laboratorio L’Immagine Ritrovata, supervised for color correction by Luca Bigazzi.

The restoration was realized from the original camera negatives and audio negatives conserved by the Istituto Luce – Cinecittà.

After the restoration, the film has been re-screened, including special events in Palermo.

Inspirations, Influences, and Title

The title Totò che visse due volte is inspired by the Italian title of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (La donna che visse due volte). The resemblance is more than wordplay: there is the idea of the double, of resurrection, of altered perception of reality.

Ciprì and Maresco come from Cinico TV, a television format already experimental, grotesque, where Sicily was represented in raw, deformed ways, but heavy with dark, poetic power. Many of the atmospheres in Totò che visse due volte derive from that experience.

Literary & philosophical influences: one sees connections to nihilism, to the loss of the sacred, to existential angst; echoes of Pasolini (institutional corruption, violence, religion as social structure) and Buñuel (surrealism, satire of the sacred, the grotesque).

Also, according to Maresco, there’s a dimension of existential science fiction—not in the usual visual sense (no robots etc.)—but in the atmospheres, in suggesting that the end for the human being has already begun, that technology, social mutation, loss of faith are leading towards a scenario where “man as we knew him” is at a stopping point.

Why Watch It: What It Leaves Behind

Because it is not hagiographic nor comforting: it’s a work that forces you to look at what we often ignore, to confront your fears, your faith, or lack thereof, with moral bourgeoisies, with misery, with pain.

Because the aesthetic: Mattography (Bigazzi), visual constructions, black & white, use of silence, of disturbing sound, of hallucinatory scenes — all contribute to making the experience memorable.

Because it’s a piece of Italian cinema that has been a watershed: pushed the limits of censorship, sparked debates not only aesthetic but moral, political, religious.

For those who love cinema that isn’t afraid to expose itself, that doesn’t look for ease, that accepts being disturbed.

Criticisms, Weaknesses, Reception

Of course not everyone loves it:

Some viewers find it too extreme, vulgar, gratuitous in certain scenes.

Some believe the second part is less effective compared to the first and third episodes, as if the rhythm slips, or the message gets diluted.

Commercially: very modest box office. It circulated in few theaters. The distribution was limited.

Filming Locations: Where the Film Was Shot

Here are some of the known locations where Totò che visse due volte was filmed—real places that help ground its surreal, grotesque, apocalyptic vision:

Palermo: Many scenes are set in Palermo.

The votive shrine (edicola votiva) robbed by Paletta to pay the prostitute is located in Via San Giacomo alla Guilla, Palermo.

Paletta’s house is in a courtyard known as “U Bagghiu S. Giovannuzzu” in Palermo.

The road that Fefè (Carlo Giordano) walks with friends to visit the deceased Pitrinu is along Lungofiume Via Mario Adorno, Palermo.

The beach where Fefè imagines dancing with Pitrinu (Pietro Arcidiacono) is the Arenella beach near Via Bordonaro, Palermo.

Poggioreale (Trapani), old Poggioreale: The site of the scene in which Pitrinu’s father knocks a man out with a candle and steals the gold of the deceased — in the old Poggioreale.

These real locations contribute a lot: the decaying architecture, the forgotten neighbourhoods, the coastal decay, all feed into the feeling of ruin and spiritual abandonment that the film evokes.

Conclusion

Totò che visse due volte is a film you don’t easily forget. It isn’t “light” nor comfortable, but it is powerful. If you are willing to challenge yourself — as a spectator, as a human being seeking meaning, beauty, truth — this film is an opportunity.

I encourage you to watch it not just as a cinematic experience, but as a questioning: what does it mean to believe? what does losing faith feel like? what does it mean to have hope in a world that seems forsaken? Where does sacred end and human brutality begin?