A series of gags using a Little Tramp-style voter, who will make it to vote at any cost: defying his clumsy neighbours’ traps, the poll’s closing time, and even the Tiber’s waters. The silents filmed by the Comitati Civici for the 1953 elections continue the fight against abstention.

It was Luigi Gedda who commissioned the cineaste Baldi to make a film to get people to the polls for the election of ’53. The film had to be delivered in only 10 days, and Marcello Baldi did not have time to sit down and write. Along with an architect friend who had a craze for Chaplin, he shot impromptu the story of a poor Tramp besieged by two mustached men who do everything to stop him from voting. Outside the slapstick comedy, the reality for the onscreen average voter is much less complicated. Voting is depicted as a right and a duty, defended even in films by the pro-voting propaganda of the Comitato Civico Nazionale.

Giulia Fiaccarini