L'armata Brancaleone
For Love and Gold - Characters & Cast
Character Analysis
Brancaleone da Norcia
Vittorio Gassman
Motivation
To claim a fiefdom, gain wealth and status, and live up to the romantic ideal of knighthood he has invented for himself.
Character Arc
Starts as an impoverished, arrogant loner; becomes the leader of a group of misfits; fails to become a lord; ends as a follower in a crusade but retains his delusional dignity. He learns nothing but survives everything.
Teofilatto dei Leonzi
Gian Maria Volonté
Motivation
Self-preservation and amusement; he finds the group's incompetence fascinating.
Character Arc
A Byzantine noble captured for ransom who eventually stays with the group because he has nowhere else to fit in. He represents the decay of the old nobility—effeminate, treacherous, yet oddly loyal.
Abacuc
Carlo Pisacane
Motivation
Profit and survival; he hopes to make money from the fiefdom scheme.
Character Arc
An elderly Jewish merchant who acts as the group's treasurer and voice of pessimistic reason. He endures the journey until his death, serving as the grounding reality to Brancaleone's flights of fancy.
Zenone
Enrico Maria Salerno
Motivation
To cleanse the world of sin and retake the Holy Land.
Character Arc
A fanatical monk who appears intermittently to save or doom the group. He leads a crusade of the poor and eventually absorbs Brancaleone's band into his holy army.