Selectively distributed Stateside, Italian writer/director Ettore Scola was chiefly known ‘over here’ by an early release (THE PIZZA TRIANGLE/’70), prestige items (A SPECIAL DAY/’77; PASSIONE D'AMORE/’81, THAT NIGHT IN VARENNES/’82, LA FAMIGLIA/’87), and meeting the challenge of converting the popular dialogue-free theatrical event LE BAL/’83 into legit cinema. But with 42 directing credits (90 as writer), these barely scratch the surface of a protean film figure; last survivor of the immediate post-WWII Italian film generation. So it’s a special treat to watch him toss caution to the wind in this scabrous comedy about what once was called ‘the undeserving poor.’ Like a Ben Jonson Elizabethan ‘comedy of humors’ set in a shantytown on the outskirts of modern Rome, Nino Manfredi leads a four-generation shackful of dysfunction, the main source of ‘wealth’ after receiving a million lira compensation for losing sight in one eye. Great-grandma (his mother), the only other member of the dilapidated house pulling in any cash with her small pension. The rest, a rabble Fagin wouldn’t have accepted as apprentice pickpockets, squabbling & screwing, snoring & scarfing the days away, on the lookout for a scam to pull, a government handout to finesse or a relative to fight with (or cuckold). Scola spends the first half of the film setting up the appalling (and appallingly funny) interpersonal dynamics (not forgetting to lock up all the little children in a fenced-in pen) before Manfredi, finding true-love in a plump, plush hooker, decides he can do without the twenty-odd souls he’s supporting. And just as those twenty odd souls figure they can do without Manfredi! It’s all against one and one against all with nothing at stake since Manfredi is determined to sell the house for profit or burn it down. Maybe both. Films with plots & a catalogue of characters this messy rarely get this close to perfection, but Scola, who won Best Director at Cannes on this, knows exactly what he’s doing every moment, and somehow pulls it off.
DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: For Scola’s look at a more genteel family, LA FAMIGLIA/’87, with Vittorio Gassman rather than Manfredi as paterfamilias. Scola worked a lot with Gassman, even co-writing Dino Risi’s masterful IL SORPASSO/’62 for him. And, fine though he is, the Nino Manfredi role here feels like it was written with Gassman in mind.
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