Luciano Salce
Fantozzi

«I would humbly like to point out that I have not heard from my husband for 18 days. I dare to start being respectfully worried»

These are the words spoken fifty years ago, with a delicate voice, by a humble and unassuming woman, clinging to the home phone receiver, while searching for her husband, of whom there had been no news for days. An ordinary scene, which painted the first strokes of the tragicomic canvas of a work that would forever change the seventh art in Italy.

Then a hilarious epilogue, with the wall of the old company toilets smashed with a sledgehammer, from which the poor accountant Fantozzi emerges, amidst stupefaction and rubble, as if he were a miner buried after a collapse in the depths of a tunnel. Everyone at "ItalPetrolCemeTermoTessilFarmoMetalChimica" had forgotten about him but not his faded wife Pina, worried at home together with their monstrous daughter Mariangela.

“Fantozzi” was born from the pen of Paolo Villaggio, among the pages of his first book of the same name in 1971. It arrived in cinemas four years later, in 1975, after the release of the second chapter of the saga: “The Second Tragic Book of Fantozzi”.

Shooting would have started much earlier if the first director chosen by Villaggio, Salvatore Samperi, had not decided to abandon the project. With Luciano Salce, they started over and the rest is history, or rather legend.

It's strange to think that half a century has passed, given the contemporaneity and relevance of the facts and characters that accompany the clumsy accountant. Since the mid-seventies things have changed but the underlying plot remains bitterly the same. Our alarm clock continues to ring, the rules, attitudes, and anxieties, although in different forms, remain the same. Like our desire to laugh at the colleague or the neighbor, at them being harassed or bullied by superiors or those around them, pretending not to notice that the problem is also and above all ours.

Society has changed but the human being has not. Who hasn't had a friend and companion in misadventures like the accountant Filini, full of initiative in dragging colleague Ugo into situations bordering on the grotesque. How not to laugh again, seeing the tennis match in the fog, with that “Batti Lei!” which at the time must have made La Crusca shiver, seeing that blunder passed off as a subjunctive, but it also actually legitimized an expression carved into eternity.

There is the whole universe of the average Italian man. There's the football game with colleagues, the Sunday hunting trip or the outing to Lake Bracciano, with camping included and tragic tent assembly. Filini will also organize that absurd New Year's Eve party, in the dingy basement animated by the music of the crazy maestro Canello, who, to sneak away before midnight, will tamper with the clock hands, going from standard time to daylight saving time in a moment. Not before poor Fantozzi has endured the tortures of hell, due to a waiter so incompetent and bumbling as to almost annoy us.

Then there is the difficult relationship with the fairer sex. On one side the faithful wife Pina, always by her husband's side in his unfortunate daily life; on the other the unsightly daughter Mariangela, who weighs down the domestic reality as a whole. Then there is the woman of forbidden dreams, that Miss Silvani so vulgar and irreverent, as to be irresistible in the eyes of her never-resigned suitor. Fantozzi, in addition to the problem of mediocrity, will have to deal with the chameleonic surveyor Calboni, so cunning and chaotic to the point of being fascinating in the eyes of Silvani, who will not resist him.

For the “provocative” Miss Silvani, Fantozzi will really do anything, even try to lose weight without any success, effectively subjecting himself to torture and having to resort to an improbable girdle, to take her to a Japanese restaurant. He will also be the third wheel on a trip to Courmayeur, during which he will compete with Calboni in telling tall tales, going so far as to pose as a national ski champion, ultimately risking his life but recounting it to us in the most amusing way possible.

Fantozzi is unlucky and often looks for trouble but he does not lack courage. A courage that is pointless, which ultimately has no escape but makes him human and makes us root for him, indeed... for us.

Like when he takes billiard lessons in secret, going so far as to pretend to have a secret lover, ultimately betrayed by the tools of the trade, which will expose him once again. So he will go from being a “big fool” to a champion in one evening, in front of everyone, reclaiming for a few minutes the dignity and proud gaze of his wife Pina. Even at the cost of having to flee, abducting the beloved elderly mother of the landlord, the grandiose director, Count Catellani.

Fantozzi's relationship with authority is what we all have deep down. After so many humiliations comes rebellion, translated into stone-throwing at the windows of the upper floors of the Megaditta, after careful subversive reflection inspired by the communist colleague Folagra, who opens his eyes to capitalism. In the end, the bravado will lead to a completely unexpected epilogue, far from the crucifixion in the cafeteria, ventilated by Fantozzi. The Galactic Director will forgive him and welcome him into the great aquarium of employees.

Paolo Villaggio told a bit about himself and a bit about us, about Rome and his Genoa, about an Italy that is no more but was stylized within the film, suspended in a dimension all its own.

Fantozzi will forever remain a masterpiece of our cinema, despite the detractors, because there have been and always will be. What should never be lacking, in those who follow the deeds of Italy's most famous accountant, is that pinch of irony and thinly-veiled self-criticism, which allows us to laugh heartily at our misadventures, perhaps feeling detached from them.

Because in life it's good not to take oneself too seriously. Without exaggerating, of course.

Happy birthday, accountant.