Commedia all'italiana

[3][4][5] Rather than a specific genre, the term indicates a period (approximately from the late 1950s to the early 1970s) in which the Italian film industry was producing many successful comedies, with some common traits like satire of manners, farcical and grotesque overtones, a strong focus on spicy social issues of the period (like sexual matters, divorce, contraception, marriage of the clergy, the economic rise of the country and its various consequences, the traditional religious influence of the Catholic Church in Italy) and a prevailing middle-class setting, often characterized by a substantial background of sadness and social criticism that diluted the comic contents.

The economic situation, student unrest and the search for new emancipations in the world of work and family, became the ideal place within which to project the characters of the comedy, ready to revive the changes in civil society on stage.

During the 1970s, the commedia all'italiana even touched on more complex social issues, with works with a basically dramatic background (for example, In Prison Awaiting Trial by Nanni Loy or An Average Little Man by Mario Monicelli).

Guido Tersilli, primario della clinica Villa Celeste, convenzionata con le mutue by Alberto Sordi, and Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street, where Gassman is joined by Marcello Mastroianni, Totò, and a roundup of exceptional character actors.

[1] It is generally believed that it was the director Mario Monicelli, progenitor and among the greatest exponents (with Dino Risi, Luigi Comencini, Pietro Germi and Ettore Scola) of the commedia all'italiana, who inaugurated this new phase with the feature film Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), written together with Suso Cecchi D'Amico and the screenwriting duo Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli.

The feature film, constantly poised between humor and drama, reconstructs the days following the Armistice of Cassibile, helping to break the wall of silence that had fallen on the Italian Civil War, a topic hitherto ignored by a large part of national cinema.

[14] Among his best works are On the Tiger's Back (1961), La ragazza di Bube (1963), The Scientific Cardplayer (1972), the drama The Adventures of Pinocchio (1972), The Cat (1978) and Traffic Jam (1979), in which different genres and styles merge.

After having ventured into works with an evident civil content, somehow attributable to the canons of neorealism, in the last phase of his career he directed films that could be inserted within the range of comedy, where components of criticism survive alongside the usual humorous tones on the customs of the middle class.

In 1974 he directed his best-known film, We All Loved Each Other So Much, which retraces 30 years of Italian history through the stories of three friends: the lawyer Gianni Perego (Vittorio Gassman), the porter Antonio (Nino Manfredi) and the intellectual Nicola (Stefano Satta Flores).

[3][4][5] A separate place is occupied by Antonio Pietrangeli, who in almost all of his films has dealt with female psychology, outlining portraits of unhappy and tormented women with marked sensitivity, from Adua and Her Friends (1960) to La visita (1963), from The Girl from Parma (1963) to I Knew Her Well (1965), considered his masterpiece.

Also in this context, the work done by the director Lina Wertmüller, who together with the experienced couple of actors Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato gave life, in the first half of the 1970s, to successful films among The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Love and Anarchy (1973) and Swept Away (1974).

[17] Of note is the artistic product of Sergio Citti, who along the lines of certain Pasolinian cinema directs bizarre and surreal comedies, achieving convincing results in more than one film among which are Ostia (1970), Beach House (1977) and Il minestrone (1981).

[6][19] Among the actors, in addition to Totò and Aldo Fabrizi, the main representatives are Alberto Sordi, Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni and Nino Manfredi,[20] while among the actresses is Monica Vitti.

Subsequently (from the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the following decade), Paolo Villaggio, Gigi Proietti, Giancarlo Giannini, Michele Placido, Laura Antonelli, Stefano Satta Flores, Mariangela Melato, as well as an infinite number of excellent character actors and supporting actors, among which are Gianni Agus, Tiberio Murgia, Carlo Pisacane (better known as "Capannelle"), Renato Salvatori, Mario Carotenuto, Memmo Carotenuto, Tina Pica, Marisa Merlini, Ave Ninchi, Carlo Delle Piane, Leopoldo Trieste, Giacomo Furia, Luigi Pavese and Raffaele Pisu.

There are also many foreign performers who have often been protagonists or co-stars in films belonging to the commedia all'italiana genre, including Catherine Spaak, Louis de Funès, Fernandel, Sylva Koscina, Bernard Blier, Mario Adorf, Tomas Milian, Philippe Noiret, Senta Berger, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Claudine Auger, Ann-Margret and Dustin Hoffman.

Among the most genuinely Roman interpreters, Alberto Sordi participated in over 140 cinematographic works, ended up embodying, perhaps better than any other, his city of origin, giving life to a vast range of characters representing situations and issues of society weather.

From the Middle Ages by Mario Monicelli in L'armata Brancaleone and Brancaleone at the Crusades, to the papal Rome of the Risorgimento by Luigi Magni in The Conspirators and In the Name of the Pope King, to the numerous films that portray Italians grappling with the ups and downs over the years of the fascist regime and World War II, such as The Fascist, Roaring Years, We All Loved Each Other So Much, The Two Marshals, Everybody Go Home, or even Polvere di stelle, the story of a shabby avanspettacolo company struggling with the upheavals of the Badoglio Proclamation, and many other films.

The progressive escalation of social and political conflict in Italy in the 1970s, with the eruption of terrorism, the economic crisis, and a widespread sense of insecurity, in fact ended up extinguishing that drive towards an ironic smile which had been the dominant feature of the commedia all'italiana in the best years, replaced little by little by an ever more crude and dramatic vision of reality.

[3][4][5] The genre of commedia all'italiana in a broad sense, albeit with characteristics that are by now profoundly different from those of the 1950s and 1970s, found its place in the Italian film scene in the early 1980s with filmmakers such as Carlo Verdone, Nanni Moretti, Maurizio Nichetti, Roberto Benigni, Francesco Nuti, Alessandro Benvenuti and Massimo Troisi.

Starting from the 1990s, feature films by Gabriele Salvatores, Paolo Virzì, Francesca Archibugi, Daniele Luchetti and Silvio Soldini, joined by more disengaged comedies such as those by Leonardo Pieraccioni, Vincenzo Salemme, Giovanni Veronesi and others.