This is an Italian sex comedy that, like the earlier sex comedy "Il Gatto Mammone", combines the comic stylings of Lando Buzzanca ("The Eroticist", "Il Domestico") with gorgeous, oft-nude body of Gloria Guida (Miss Teen Italy of 1974). Actually, Guida gets to demonstrate a few comic styling of her own as a bohemian theater "actress" who lives in cramped apartment with a whole bunch of other clothing-averse bohemian types. She is very devoted to her older beau Buzzanca, but his life is very complicated due to his own devotion to his very big and very old dog, the ironically named "Piccolo" (basically "Tiny"), and his even older grandmother. In order to take care of these two dependents, he forsakes his loyal girlfriend for a rich female pharmacist (Andrea Ferriola) and moves in with her and her haughty bourgeois mother and aunts--with disastrous results for all involved.
Messalina was the Roman noblewoman who inveigled ageing emperor Claudio into marriage. Once ensconced on the throne, Messalina launched a reign of terror that shook the empire to its very foundations. The subject of countless film treatments, Rome's most villified empress is herein played by British actress Belinda Lee.
Directed by the incredibly prolific Mario Camerini, Suor Letizia was released in English-speaking regions as When Angels Don't Fly and The Awakening. In her first film appearance since The Rose Tattoo, Anna Magnani plays a feisty nun named Sister Letizia. Believing herself above such earthly trivialities as a maternal instinct, Sr. Letizia changes her way of thinking when an abandoned child is placed in her care. Unofficially adopting the boy, the good sister eventually comes to realize that even she cannot provide the care and guidance of a biological mother. Carefully constructed to accommodate all the surefire box-office elements inherent in Camerini's earlier films, Suor Letizia was almost guaranteed to be a hit.