Dino Risi
I Mostri

This is a clever film.

Take two beloved actors, create a carefree comedy tailor-made to evoke bittersweet laughter, perfectly shaped to suit the chameleon-like characteristics of two iconic actors who enjoy themselves and entertain with their caricatures.

"I Mostri" is an episodic film (a novelty for Italian cinema), from 1963, directed by Dino Risi, which depicts 1960s Italy in a tableau that touches on a bit of everything: from family to politics, from sports to romantic relationships, from career to immorality, from religion to the power of the media. 

Although the film may seem very fragmented and not very homogeneous (the episodes are twenty), what does not escape notice is the chameleon-like skill of the unforgettable duo Vittorio Gassman-Ugo Tognazzi who effectively convey feelings of hate-love-tenderness.

Tognazzi is more suited to grotesque roles (deformed), cynical, sly and sharp. Gassman is diverted into harlequin-like, noisy, elegant (even feminine) parts, but also tender and bittersweet, as in the final episode of the boxer.

The skill of the two actors is the heart of the film, which, as mentioned a few lines above, suffers from a fragmented and disjointed rhythm, which risks allowing the message to slip away and mixes everything into a caldron that is entertaining, but not very linear.

Risi throws in a bit of everything, including a touch of healthy, if you will, instrumental voyeurism which, however, at the time, as now, must have only met the expectations of an audience that escaped reality, still too frustrated and disoriented by changes, through cinema.

Italy of the clever, the rising cynic who takes advantage of the poor, the naive. Italy of mechanisms which, alas, get jammed due to negligence or superficiality. The little Italy of "mors tua, vita mea", of queues, broken dreams, and (fruitless) modern education, of recommendations, of female emancipation, of the career man. Italy, in its entirety, deformed, of the monsters. Monsters inside and out (just remember the "sketch" episode of smiling and satisfied police officers being photographed after an arrest). And much more.

Laughter, indignation, and a bit of bitterness, for a black and white film, not even aged too badly, with an ingenious and lively soundtrack.