Luigi Zampa
Il Medico della Mutua

In 1968, during the era of widespread protests, Italian comedy delivers a blow to the public health system, whose flaws and distortions were already at the center of the debate. Luigi Zampa's film is based on a satirical pamphlet by Giuseppe D'Agata (scripted by Zampa, Sordi, and Sergio Amidei) and is centered around the phenomenon, both ignoble and widespread, of "commercializing" patients, an inevitable consequence of a system where doctors, to make ends meet, must acquire as many patients as possible.

Newly graduated in medicine, the protagonist Guido Tersilli wants to make a career and increase his earnings by tirelessly acquiring new patients, assisted by his fiancée and his mother. The opportunity for a big break comes when a colleague, famous for managing to acquire over two thousand patients, collapses from overwork: Tersilli successfully woos his wife, and upon his death, obtains the considerable "reward" as a dowry. Overwhelmed by work, after dumping both his fiancée and the widow and marrying the wealthy daughter of a builder, Tersilli himself is hospitalized for nervous exhaustion and must defend himself from colleagues eager to inherit his patients...

The premises for a film with a strong satirical impact were certainly not lacking. But Il medico della mutua, one of the most famous Italian comedies, is not one of the most successful. Among the strengths (narrative fluidity, accurate context description, civic force) and the weaknesses (opportunism, ideological ambiguity, tendency towards stereotyping and caricature) that have characterized the main genre of our cinematography, the film by Zampa and Sordi is an example especially of the latter: the denunciation of the healthcare system's anomalies is not very deep, and the subject's polemical strength ends up being diluted in a mechanism made of amusing scenes, more akin to farce (and jokes) than satire. This does not detract from the fact that the humor in the operation, although coarse and opportunistic, has its effectiveness; that the grotesque depiction of a system corrupted by various types of illegalities - among inefficient bureaucracies that encourage fraud through their lack of controls and doctors who, in the name of money, gleefully mock the Hippocratic Oath - possesses a certain civic utility (and at the time there were complaints from the higher echelons of the medical order); that the depiction of the social context, of a small Italy dedicated daily to deceit and micro-frauds, is still terribly relevant today.

The main attraction of the show is obviously Alberto Sordi, somewhat out of place age-wise but absolutely at ease in the role of yet another quintessential Italian climber, shrewd, cynical, and a mama’s boy, with a streak of roguish villainy that makes him the true embodiment of the anti-hero typical of this kind of comedy: simultaneously likable and deplorable, lovable and repugnant, ultimately a mirror in which the Italian viewer sees themselves, ending up laughing at themselves more than being outraged. In the face of the star Sordi, the other actors only sketch variously caustic caricatures: Claudio Gora is the hypocritical chief doctor who deplores the commercialization of the profession while collecting enormous fees; Nanda Primavera is the mother who finds in Guido’s career compensation for the "sacrificed endured" to raise him; Sara Franchetti and Evelyn Stewart, the two beautiful girls supporting Tersilli, are nothing more than decorative presences; above all stands Bice Valori, a funny performer of the widow Bui, outlined as a caricature of silent film divas.

The direction by a distinguished professional like Luigi Zampa keeps its distance and does nothing more than record Sordi's performance, with undeniable clarity and some visual elegance of vaguely Art Nouveau taste (Tersilli’s courting of Amelia Bui). The soundtrack by Piero Piccioni, with its main motif (the March of Aesculapius), has rightly entered the musical imagination of Italians.