I'm much more a European Italian than I am an American Italian, and I've always felt that that style of acting comedy is in me. I put comedy as much as I can into all my movies, if I can help it.
Modern reformers offer nebulous theories or write philanthropic novels. But your thief acts! He is as clear as a fact and as logical as a punch on the nose! And what a style he has!
All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences, which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable.
From the early days of the telegraph, to be a telegrapher was a job, and there weren't many of those folks. They could recognize each other's style by their dots and dashes. They called that the "fist." St. George, they have a fist. You taste something from St. George, even across categories - the gin, the whisky - it tastes like something from St. George. It's the same as going to a great bar: You get the soul of the person making it.
Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.
I must beg you to indulge me in the matter of hyphens.... You will find that I have marked out a great many in the proofs. We arein danger of Germanizing our printing by using them so much, and I have a very decided preference in the matter.