For its first hour or so, Mario Monicelli's Un borghese piccolo piccolo seems like a pleasant, moderately incisive comedy of modern life, focusing on Vivaldi (Alberto Sordi), a ministry bureaucrat whose ambitions begin and end with getting his accountant son Mario a job for life in the same department, which requires overcoming major competition in the entrance exam. After exhausting the potential of personal charm and cajoling, and then submitting to the supposedly influence-boosting step of joining the Freemasons, Vivaldi at least gets his hands on an advance copy of the essay question, and then on the way to the exam...Mario is shot dead by a fleeing bank robber. The grief and shock is mainly embodied in the stroke suffered by Vivaldi's wife (Shelley Winters, for whatever reason), rendering her immobile; Vivaldi retains his external dignity and composure, while single-handedly focusing on finding the perpetrator and making him suffer, and the film is quite persuasive in depicting his success at this. The midpoint swerve is quite startling, in effect serving as a rebuke of whatever pleasure we took from the first half's images of workers buried behind piles of paper, groveling before their self-absorbed bosses, devoting their lives to jobs that allow them homes little better than hovels, seeking redemption in superstitions they can't even be bothered to enact with any passion. Toward the end, a priest expresses the view that mankind deserves no better than a deluge to wash it all away; it seems pretty much like an implicit invitation to descend deeper into sin, and the final scene suggests that Vivaldi will do just that, becoming a self-justifying monster. In retrospect, you might reflect on how Mario's death immediately follows his ogling of an attractive woman walking before them, something that seems excessively emphasized at the time - the film seems to imply that the average man can barely be allowed his dreams, and a later remarkable scene makes it clear he can't be allowed a respectful space for his coffin either. The film's insinuating impact though lies largely in its elusiveness, the difficulty of knowing to what degree Monicelli is actually seeking to remake the complacent viewer, versus toying with him.

The last time a movie affected me so strongly during the show, I believe it was another Italian movie called "cannibal holocaust".If you've seen that movie, you know what I mean.But "Un borghese piccolo piccolo" is even more powerful because I expected a comedy till the point... Till the point the movie twists all of a sudden, unexpectedly, and the drama and sadness overwhelms you.The movie doesn't give up on the comedy side yet and there are some great touches like the mortuary room scene, but at this point it doesn't make you smile anymore but only further piles up to make you even queasier and uneasy.After that, a further twist: we start bordering on schizophrenia and insanity with a reflection on how a "normal little man" can be pushed to doing horrific things.I was watching it during a rainy evening and I had to stop to only resume it the day after.Will not forget this movie.

The genius of this film is the use of comedy (so commonly used during the 50's) to inject into a drama. The madly commuter travails, squeezing the tiny Fiat 500 through traffic, getting a spot, fighting with the doorman who has to write you up because you're one minute late in entering the Ministry office. This movie is very "Rome" because of the bureaucratic offices there, the same could be said of "Washington DC". The secret meeting the previous commenter mentions is not a underground fascist meeting, but a Mason's secret meeting, sort of a secret handshake or sect that bureaucrats and other insular bodies of government rely on to enforce a "code" of behavior or lifestyle. In fact, the Mason's chief is somewhat disappointed with the main character for not following the Mason's funeral style for the burial of the killed son. So, one watching this film laughs and laughs, and then it gets serious. Even psychological, but almost to reveal a hidden secretive psychological side that society condemns, but that, in secret, an individual manifests. Like torturing sadistically the killer. And at the end, as the image zooms out, one is left alone and indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd in a sea of humanity. Here in the US, it is not available on DVD, but I found it in libraries in VHS.

I saw this film only once in Italy in 1983 and I swear the whole city I was visiting shut down that evening to view this film. I was long-accustomed to Alberto Sordi playing the comedic clown in his films but THIS film is a cross between a light-hearted Italian comedy and Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. In fact, the moment I view the torture of the policeman scene in Reservoir Dogs I immediately remembered watching Un Borghese Piccolo Piccolo so long ago. Alberto Sordi plays a Roman bureaucrat desperate to get his son a job with the Roman municipal government - even going to the extent of attending an underground Fascist meeting (although vehemently anti-Fascist) to run elbows with bureaucrats on the hiring board. Shortly thereafter, during a botched bank robbery where Sordi and his son are literally at the wrong place at the wrong time, the son gets killed by machine gun fire by fleeing bandits. At this point the film is no longer a comedy. Sordi memorizes the features of the gunman and ends up tracking him down and then sadistically torturing him, tied to a chair at his cottage, in retribution for his son's murder. Disturbing stuff indeed that had you glued to the television set. A film I will never forget and WOULD LOVE to get a hold of on DVD. SAdly, an overlooked film starring Alberto Sordi but 'ya never know - perhaps Quentin Tarantino may release it again to a North American audience? Speriamo...