In front of Pisa's leaning tower, tourists from various countries queue to visit the world-famous building. Suddenly, four men dressed in orange uniforms jump from a vehicle of "Towers maintenance". After gauging the inclination of the tower, they organize visitors, shouting alarm warnings and orders by megaphone: on one side, those who support the building with their bare hands; on the other, those who hold it by means of a long rope. Police sirens are hear approximating the location. The four flee in the truck, while tourists remain in their places with goofy air. On the run, the four cheaters are stopped by a police officer who demands the driver his license. Presenting it and after a moment of awe, they discover that the document belongs to the driver's wife's lover. In fact, the husband himself had inducted her to infidelity, by pointing, by pure joke, her "unknown admirer". Leap in time. It is the moment of confrontation of the husband, owner of a restaurant, with the "rival", now a customer of the establishment. The wife, displaying a black eye as punishment for her treason, warns her man of the alleged lover presence. The expectation of a scene of blood fades in a more prosaic, ridiculing and "tasty" vengeance,: the client is forced to take down, to the last drop, a bowl of soup enriched with the urine of the "ristorante" owner. These sequences reveal the way Mario Monicelli filmed comedy. The comic situations, in a bittersweet tone, meet and interpenetrate. Some of the episodes have markedly satirical character; in general, evil deeds the protagonists plan and apply on people passing by. Sometimes, however, the circumstances of their mediocre lives and somewhat advanced age turn them into victims, in situations more or less tragic and irreversible — such as the unwanted pregnancy of a young daughter or the death of a irreverence comrade, whose tomb they visit at the beginning of the film. Still, even a disaster as the 1966' flooding of Florence can be object of a sentence or a flippant proposal. The comic effect is a result of the decoupage and editing of such an illogical succession/interpenetration of eccentric events. Thus, Monicelli active spectator's emotions that go beyond cathartic laughter in front of a merely ridiculous unusual, confusing, eschatological, etc. situation. All very different from the current Hollywood teen comedies, full of eschatology transformed without any creativity into cliché.
Review of Amici miei - Atto II°
