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The Bigamist

At the Brattle through Saturday

The plot starts out thick as minestrone and thickens, thickens, thickens. It centers around a travelling salesman whose wife suspects him on general principles. When the police arrest this simple fellow on bigamy charges, no one investigates the possibility of mistaken identity. Which might have saved a good deal of trouble. Meanwhile, noisy relatives of all parties clog the wheels of justice.

Entitled The Bigamist, this Italian film might be called No Noise is Good Noise. It features Vittorio de Sica as "an eloquent but absent-minded wind-bag lawyer who can't tell a tort from a tortoni." Though Mr. de Sica takes his limited role firmly by the tail, he overshakes it until it becomes disappointing.

Other characters (and there are many, many other characters) turn in stereotyped performances ranging from mediocre to mediocre. An exception to this is the baby, though it would take too long to tell you whose baby.

A clever audience will save the cartoons until last. There are three: one about a Harvard man in the Old West and two funny ones.

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