Vicenzo works as an attendant on the sleeping cars between Rome and Paris. For several years he has had two families, a wife and scrounging Neapolitan brother-in-law in Rome and an attractive widow with a young daughter in Paris whose existence he has managed to keep secret from the other. When he is offered the chance to work permanently at one location he chooses Paris, but complications ensue when his brother-in-law follows him to the French capital.
Gian Piero Brunetta highlights, with regard to this period, the "progressive integration of writers in cinema", so in Signori, in carrozza! we find, among the screenwriters, the name of Brancati as Alberto Moravia had found in Perdizione, and, by listing, writers such as Palazzeschi, Calvino, Pratolini and others engaged in the new role of screenwriters. Brunetta himself sees this commitment, however, simply as a "recruitment of intellectual workforce for the manufacture of products destined for popular markets".[2]
It has also been noted that Gentlemen, in a carriage! "Is considered a bit of a Cinderella between the films of Zampa and Brancati, overshadowed by the fame of works such as difficult years, easy years, the art of getting by.[3]
Alberto Moravia said: "In this film there is only one really vital reason: the comparison between the scrounger and the scrounger, between the conductor of the sleeping cars and his impudent and insatiable brother-in-law".[4]
