The Thirteen Chairs

The Thirteen Chairs is a 1969 comedy film directed by Nicolas Gessner and Luciano Lucignani and starring Sharon Tate, Vittorio Gassman and Orson Welles, and featuring Vittorio De Sica, Terry-Thomas, Mylène Demongeot, Grégoire Aslan, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Lionel Jeffries. It is based on the 1928 satirical novel The Twelve Chairs by Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, which has been adapted many times (including a 1970 version directed by Mel Brooks). Plot Mario Beretti is a young Italian-American barber who runs a barber shop in New York City located near a construction site that boasts few customers. His life reaches a turning point when he is notified of the death of his aunt in Lavenham, England, who named him her sole heir. Mario rushes to England and learns that his inheritance consists of not much; only thirteen antique chairs that have a certain value. He sells them to cover his transportation costs, but soon learns from his Aunt Laura's last message that inside one of the chairs is a fortune in jewels. He tries to buy back the chairs, but is unsuccessful. With the help of lovely American antiques dealer Pat, who works in the antiques shop in front of Aunt Laura's house, where he sold the chairs, he launches a bizarre quest to track down the chairs that takes the duo from London to Paris, then to Rome. Along the way they meet a bunch of equally bizarre characters, including Albert, the driver of a furniture-moving van; a prostitute named Judy; Maurice, the leader of a traveling theater company that stages a poor version of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; and Italian entrepreneur Carlo Di Seta and his vivacious daughter Stefanella. The bizarre chase ends in Rome, where the chair containing the jewels finds its way into a truck and is collected by nuns who auction it off for charity. With nothing left to do as a result of the failure of his quest, Mario travels back to New York City by ship. Pat sees him off and waves goodbye to him.