His "masterpiece" follows the bleak travails of a poverty-stricken unemployed man (again played by Nichetti) who finds work in a chandelier factory, but cannot resist stealing one of the gleaming lights for his wife.

The pompous director is initially pleased with the seriousness with which his work is analysed, but he then becomes distraught when his black-and-white opus is repeatedly interrupted by full-colour commercials.

The accident would have forced Maria into prostitution, with their two sons, Bruno (Federico Rizzo) and Paolo (Matteo Auguardi), ending up in an orphanage in the final scene.

However, Nichetti manages to convince Maria and Bruno to return to the film universe with shopping carts of modern-day goods, with the Piermattei family reunited the satisfaction of the viewer (Carlina Torta).

Having created a permanent niche in the hearts of the world's movie sentimentalists with Cinema Paradiso, they now let loose their secret weapon, writer-director-actor and comic extraordinaire, Maurizio Nichetti".

But in The Icicle Thief, a satirical fantasy about the way television butchers the movies it puts on, Italian film director Maurizio Nichetti 'discovers' these insights as though for the first time".

Overall, however, Howe concluded that: "things become a little too convoluted and Icicle joins that crowded group of Italian movies with an apparent inability to understand the concept of excess.