Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

Zack (Tom Waits) and Jack (John Lurie) have been set up and landed in jail, where they’re doing time alongside Bob (Roberto Benigni) an Italian tourist who barely understands English and is in jail for accidental manslaughter. Zack and Jack want to fight almost immediately, but when Bob is able to break out — the movie is more about these men than how they jailbreak, the mechanics aren’t important — they stay with the foreigner because he can always find food.

Waits calls this “a Russian neo-fugitive episode of The Honeymooners.” Jarmusch listened to Waits’ songs and based a lot of the film on how they made him feel, yet Lurie and his band The Lounge Lizards recorded the soundtrack.

Bob, as an innocent, is able to take these broken and fighting men to the promised land, where he stays with Nicoletta (Nicoletta Braschi, who would later marry Benigni). As for Zack and Jack, they go their separate ways.

I love that this movie’s most heartfelt line, “It’s a sad and beautiful world,” was misspoken by Benigni.