The Overcoat

The Overcoat is a 1952 Italian fantasy-drama film directed by Alberto Lattuada. It stars Renato Rascel and is a modern-day version, set in Italy, of the same-named 1842 short tale by Nikolai Gogol. The director's sister, Bianca Lattuada, was one of the production managers and his father, Felice Lattuada, composed the music. It was shot at the Farnesina Studios of Titanus in Rome with sets designed by the art director Gianni Polidori. Location shooting took place in Pavia in Lombardy. Plot The Northern Italian town of Pavia in the 1930s. Carmine De Carmine, a clerk employed in the town hall, lives very modestly in rented room. He is devoted to his work, but is continually ignored or demeaned by the town's general secretary as well as by the mayor, an ambitious and corrupt politician, who has both a wife and a mistress. Carmine wears a shabby and threadbare coat which leaves him exposed to cold winter winds, but since he can barely pay the rent, a good winter coat is beyond his means. One day a beautiful and elegant woman, taking him for a beggar, gives him a considerable sum which Carmine brings to a tailor as a downpayment for an elegant coat with a fur collar.