Il ragazzo di campagna
1984 film by Giuseppe Moccia, Franco Castellano
Il ragazzo di campagna ("The country boy") is a 1984 Italian comedy film directed by Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia. It was shown as part of a retrospective on Italian comedy at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.
Il ragazzo di campagna has a cult status in Italian culture in its satyrical representation of the contradictions of the hectic life in Milan in the mid-1980s, the years of the sorpasso (e.g., when Artemio resolves to take a taxi cab to cross the street in the impossibly trafficked Piazza San Babila). The inadequateness of Pozzetto-"country boy" in relating to Milan is reminiscent of that of Totò in another extremely popular film, Toto, Peppino, and the Hussy.
Plot
Artemio (Pozzetto) is annoyed by his monotonous life as a farmer in the countryside of Lombardy. On his 40th birthday, he decides to move to the big city of Milan and look for a job and a new life there. There he meets his cousin Severino (Massimo Boldi), who is supposed to help him familiarize with the city, but actually turns out to be a trickster and purse snatcher. Having realized the illicitness of Severino's businesses, Artemio quits him. He later falls in love with a victim of Severino's snatching, a career girl named Angela. The gap between his countryman mentality and her modern and dynamic lifestyle leads to a number of comical misunderstandings, but also provides a basis for their friendship to grow.
The public source identifies “Il ragazzo di campagna” as 1984 film by Giuseppe Moccia, Franco Castellano. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around ragazzo, campagna and film.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1082595. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984.
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This entry incorporates text from “Il ragazzo di campagna” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.