A handful of Italian exiles fall into a turf war over the right to sell cloth in this drama from Italian auteur Francesco Rosi. Mario (Renato Salvatori) is a laborer who left Italy for Hanover, where he tried to get work as a miner with little success. Mario had decided to make his way back home until he meets Toto (Alberto Sordi), a fellow Italian exile who makes a good living selling fabric and rugs. Toto persuades Mario to join his team of peddlers, called magliari, who hawk their wares on the streets of West Germany. Toto works in partnership with Raffaele (Carmine Ippolito), a textile merchant who built a small empire from his team of street dealers, but Toto wants more. Toto decides to cut ties with Raffaele and affiliate himself with a German fabric producer, Mayer (Josef Dahmen), and urges Mario and the other magliari to join him. This leads to a bitter rivalry between the two fabric dealers, one that becomes even more heated when Mario stumbles into an affair with Mayer's wife. Il Magliari was an early effort from Rosi, who went on to direct the international successes Christ Stopped At Eboli and Illustrious Corpses.
by Mark Deming
synopsis
