Intertitle of the Week: Melonfarmer!

“Who’s this walking melon?”

The line is from William Wyler’s THE SHAKEDOWN, subject of my most recent edition of The Forgotten. My copy, from Italian TV, has these simple and elegant Italian intertitles, and while Shadowplayer Christoph Michel believes that replacing intertitles is as bad as dubbing, I sort of appreciated the clue as to this copy’s provenance. Of course the Italians would like this movie, which is a sentimental fable about a young orphan thief redeemed by the love of a boxer, and the crooked fighter redeemed by his love of the kid — and at the same time, a bit of a celebration of crookedness, a sort of precursor to Bogdanovich’s PAPER MOON.

Movie also has these great intertitles for act breaks, and this one at the end. More movies should contain their own poster art.