Where it was filmed 'Big Deal on Madonna Street'

The film centres around the organisation of a ‘heist’ to turn around the fates of a group of penniless men. Their chosen target is a pawnshop located on the fictitious via delle Madonne: the building used for filming is actually located on the corner between the steps of via delle Cordonata and via delle Tre Cannelle, right in the centre of Rome not far from piazza Venezia. Front and centre in the shot of the building is the triple-spouted water fountain that sits at the foot of the steps, the distinguishing feature of which is that it has three spouts instead of just one like other water fountains in the capital.

The responsibilities of each members of the gang are made clear in the prologue to the film, when Cosimo and Capannelle try, and fail, to steal a car in via Alesia, near porta Metronia.

And so begins the hunt for a scapegoat, or rather someone to take the fall for the attempted theft in Cosimo’s place: they offer up Peppe ‘the Panther’, but his performance doesn’t convince the court, which throws him into prison with Cosimo. Outside the windows behind the two accomplices we can see Via Nazionale, and the building in which the scene takes place is the former Quirinale cinema.

As they plan the heist, the group scouts out various locations in the area, including from a terrace, the same one that is used by Tiberio to look through the window of the pawnshop (using a camera stolen in Porta Portese). The surrounding landscape tells us that we are not actually in Via delle Tre Cannelle, but further away in Santa Maria Maggiore, on Esquiline Hill.

The preparations for the heist also include a series of lessons in breaking and entering: the teacher of this unique art is Totò – Dante Cruciani. The lessons take place on the terrace of a building in Casal Bertone, a neighbourhood in the Roman suburbs, and more specifically between Via Enrico Cosenz and Via degli Orti di Malabarba.

In the closing scenes of the film, the group splits up after carrying out the heist with somewhat undesired results. Rome is still asleep as the first light of day hits: Tiberio gets on the n° 7 tram in piazza Armenia, just off Via Britannia in the district of Appio-Latino, as Ferribotte waits for the no. 31. Peppe and Capannelle are left alone, and head off on foot along a semi-deserted via Valpolicella, towards the Phlegraean Fields (near Monte Sacro). To get away from the police, the Panther hides in the middle of a group of labourers waiting for a building site to open, and ends up landing a job against his will.