Ettore Scola
Riusciranno I Nostri Eroi A Ritrovare L'Amico Misteriosamente Scomparso..

We are in Rome, in the mid-sixties, during the height of the economic boom. The ambitious publisher Fausto Di Salvo (Alberto Sordi) is making his way in the Roman business world with aggressive and unprincipled publishing initiatives, but he is stressed and frustrated: overworked, he lives in a pharaonic but impersonal villa, has a wife who is little more than decorative, a circle of parasitic friends, a son he no longer recognizes.

His brother-in-law Salvatore nicknamed "Titino" (Nino Manfredi), who left for Africa three years earlier, has not been heard from in over a year, and so Di Salvo takes advantage of an expedition to search for his brother-in-law to escape from an environment that has become too tight for him: he will fly to Africa accompanied by a close associate, a modest accountant. The two find themselves catapulted from the daily grind to the wild and boundless expanses of the dark continent, in a whirlwind of adventures on the trail of Titino, who in the meantime seems to have gotten involved in all sorts of trouble. Many presume him dead, some speak of his conversion and intention to found a mission, and there's even someone impersonating him, having somehow found his documents.

The screenplay boasts of comic devices that withstand the test of time. Hilarious is the episode where our heroes are escorted in a reckless journey across the savannah by an Italian truck driver, one Campi Benedetto, who relentlessly sings "Amoore scusami..." even when the vehicle is targeted by a rhinoceros, and gored repeatedly under Sordi's terrified gaze; who at the end of this adventure will ask Benedetto if his mother is still alive before dubbing him "Brutto fijo de na..."

Sordi understandably takes the spotlight, but Bernard Blier's role is fundamental, delivering a memorable performance, unjustly overlooked in the posters in favor of Manfredi's final cameo (a name that surely had more commercial appeal). Blier brings to life a dull and methodical accountant, the eternal scapegoat of the ever-present and hyperactive Di Salvo, the lightning rod for all his criticism, in a master-worker relationship that is the precursor to what Fantozzi would have with his various megadirectors. With the difference that Blier will find the courage to stand up to his tyrant and tell him off, in a delightful reversal of roles...

Of course, the film is full of the naiveties typical of the era, the most serious of which is painting the Italian as essentially good-hearted, respectful of nature and indigenous populations, triumphing over the Portuguese, depicted as ruthless slave drivers... If only it were so! It is well-acknowledged by now that things went quite differently in the Italian colonies.

Glossy exoticism and a hint of sensuality: ah, the bare breasts of the African women... We're in 1968, let's not forget... Here is the stereotype of the Italian comedy of the sixties dissected: the triumph of the charmingly sly Italian, a little cunning and a little roguish, of which Sordi was the icon, seducing ruthless mercenaries with plates of spaghetti aglio e olio - a must-have in Italians' luggage abroad! Always trying to "stake their claim" with the inevitable exotic local beauties. The Italian manages to get by, the film seems to suggest: on the one hand by being a clown and getting a laugh, and on the other by proving to be cleverer than the foreigner in front of him: but is it really so?

And yes, there's the tear-jerking ending, of course, with Titino deciding to stay with his beloved tribe, diving off the ship's bridge that would have taken him home, and even we, as good Italians, shed a tear, riding the wave of the enchanting landscape portrayed by Scola and the splendid soundtrack by Armando Trovajoli.

In the end, a film that is not essential, but neither banal, light and elegant, that can always be watched with great pleasure.