For Love and Gold

For Love and Gold (L'armata Brancaleone, 1966) is an Italian medieval comedy directed by Mario Monicelli — watch it online on iFILM. A band of incompetent rogues steals a deed to a supposedly wealthy village in Apulia and sets off to claim it, electing the bombastic knight Brancaleone da Norcia (Vittorio Gassman) as their reluctant commander.

Brancaleone is every inch a knight — except where results are concerned. He's pompous, thunderous, and magnificently useless in a crisis. His ragged "army" scatters at the first sign of trouble. The road south throws everything at them: Saracens, plague, monks, and a series of increasingly absurd disasters. Gassman plays the role at full volume and somehow makes it look effortless.

Monicelli aimed squarely at every cliché of the chivalric genre and didn't miss once. The film became a landmark of Italian comedy and spawned a sequel — Brancaleone alle Crociate — in 1970. Stream For Love and Gold (1966) on iFILM.