It won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1952.
The film is historic for bringing together two of Italy’s greatest acting giants: and Aldo Fabrizi . Guardie e ladri (1951)
(the "thief" Ferdinando) delivers a career-defining performance, moving away from his usual surreal slapstick to a nuanced, tragicomic portrayal of a man driven to petty crime by poverty. It won the Best Screenplay award at the
Interestingly, it faced significant trouble with censors at the time because it dared to portray the police as clumsy and the thief as sympathetic—a radical idea in 1951 Italy. Guardie e ladri (1951)