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Rating: Under the guidance of a young Ettore Scola, with this film Alberto Sordi attempted to break away from the traditional canons of Italian comedy to stage a grotesque story drawn from the sharp pen of writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
"The Most Wonderful Evening of My Life" (1972) is indeed loosely based on the novella - or short novel - "The Breakdown," one of the most interesting works by the Swiss author who passed away in 1990.
I will briefly summarize the plot of the film and the story, however warning the reader that the two tales differ significantly in their endings: in both cases, it results in a reversal of the entire story's meaning, but the respective variations significantly change the moral content of the narrative. A middle-aged salesman finds himself stranded in a small Swiss village due to his car breaking down. Finding a mechanic, while waiting for the car to be repaired, the man is hosted for one evening in the home of three elderly townsmen, who, for intellectual amusement, stage mock trials of great historical figures. However, that evening, the mock trial will have the current guest as its main defendant, whose life will prove to be anything but exemplary. The verdict, and its execution, will be surprising nonetheless.
Compared to the story, the film by Scola and Sordi is partially successful. The director's performance and the excellent staging should be positively evaluated, highlighting the contrast between the peaceful alpine world and the protagonist's inner drama, between the beauty of the external reality and the abyss of the human heart. In this sense, the film seems to anticipate the insights of Dario Argento's "Phenomena" (1984), where the splendid mountain landscapes serve as a backdrop for horrors and crimes born out of human wickedness.
Sordi's performance is consistently impeccable, albeit portraying the worn-out caricature of the cowardly, double-dealing Italian devoid of moral scruples, diverging from the original story's protagonist, a Swiss apparently respectful of the established order, civil and social rules, and the prevailing morality. However, the characterization by the Roman actor, around which the entire film narrative revolves, ends up altering the meaning of the story and the very ending of the plot.
Without delving into excessive details, to avoid spoiling the film or the story, I note how in Dürrenmatt the trial the protagonist underwent was merely a logical and playful artifice, a pretext to spend a different evening, without the pretense of ascertaining the hypothetical guilt of the accused. In the Swiss author's perspective, indeed, the trial is a farce, unable to represent a "method" to reach the truth, with the awareness that it doesn't exist, being impossible to separate false from true, righteous from evil. Based on such premises, the execution of the verdict inflicted on the protagonist was mocking, unexpected, confirming in my view the absurdity of existence itself.
The film by Scola and Sordi has, in this regard, concealed moralizing purposes, given that the trial unmasks the hypocrisy and duplicity of the wealthy Italian, reveals the usual façades of bourgeois respectability and certain superficial Catholicism, and ends with a verdict awaited by the spectator, albeit virtual. In this perspective, the execution of the sentence imposed on Sordi, though unexpected, seems the expression of an inexorable fate, a predestination of the protagonist. The mocking laugh that concludes the film - among the most unsettling scenes of Italian cinema - appears, in this sense, as the man's surrender to his destiny, as the acknowledgment of defeat.
An ultimately pacifying ending, unlike the hallucinated conclusion of Dürrenmatt's story, preferable to its film adaptation.
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