Where it was filmed 'Carmela è una bambola'

The Amalfi Coast provides the setting for Gianni Puccini’s comedy, inspired by the first verse of a Neapolitan folk song A sunnambula (The sleepwalker). The opening title sequence shows the fulcrum of the entire story: the bell tower and clock face of the Church of San Salvatore de’ Birecto in piazza Umberto I, Atrani. The clock on the ancient Palatine Chapel of Birecto has rung out the hours of daily life in the village for over 150 years, marking the passing of time with its bells; in the film, when midnight chimes, a beautiful young woman (Marisa Allasio), whom the villagers take for a ghost, walks the roofs, unawares, into her beloved’s bed. Carmela’s beloved is Totò (Nino Manfredi), a sworn enemy of her father, Don Arcangelo (Ugo D’Alessio), a former small-time crook, because he pinches his marks in piazzale dei Protontini in Amalfi, where the tourist buses set off.

Carmela is promised to Baron Prospero who waits for her outside the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Maddalena Penitente in Atrani, clearly despising Totò: however, she is forced to ask him for help on the terrace of via Giovanni Boccaccio in Ravello. As Carmela attempts a “cure” for her malady – the remedy is to be kissed by the object of her unconscious desires near the Capo d’Orso lighthouse in Maiori – her father tries to sabotage the young man’s business, sending some of his former accomplices to piazza Duomo in Ravello to blow up Totò’s bus.