[2] In his review, Vincent Canby describes the film as, "Bernardo Bertolucci's very good, cerebrally tantalizing new film, Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, the story of what may or may not be a terrorist kidnapping of the sort that has been making Italian headlines with increasing frequency in recent years.

Primo is of peasant origin and did not go beyond elementary school, so he is considered as a self-made man.

One day, their son Giovanni is kidnapped by a group of terrorists and Primo has to raise a billion of lire for the ransom.

Primo, however, continues to collect the money, helped in this by his wife, to save his second creature: the factory, on the verge of bankruptcy.

The sudden reappearance of Giovanni means that in the end the billion is invested precisely in the dairy, transformed into a cooperative company, under the control of the workers.