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Rating: Of the three feature films made in the last century, this version generated by the devilish and jester-like mind of Mario Monicelli is certainly the most famous, as well as the most recent. In 1984, Ugo Tognazzi and Alberto Sordi, two of the most distinguished standard-bearers of the historical Italian post-war comedy and now splendidly over sixty with a scent of sanctity, both bowed down for the eighth time before the Tuscan master who draws from the popular literary repertoire of the Renaissance poet and writer Giulio Cesare Croce, tackling the “dark” centuries of Lombard Medieval times, offering us simple, rough, and (to say the least) grotesque characters while crudely personifying the millennial social "triangle": Power (Government), Church, People.
Tognazzi is the shabby peasant Bertoldo, with a pronunciation that recalls a bizarre Padano-Venetian grammelot. He is a man or rather, as the epitaph on his final resting place quotes “a villain of such deformed appearance, more like a bear than a man in figure”, with boundless genius and forward-thinking cunning, casual flair and enlightening irony. Bertoldo is also wise insolence and humble madness, vile rascality, and graceful nobility of spirit. Bertoldo is the sincere audacity of making even a wicked Lombard king named Alboino appear ridiculous, played by the young Neapolitan Lello Arena, who desires him at his presence in an improbable need for entertainment and company.
Alboino is an instinctive ruler and at times immature, foolish, somewhat spoiled, moody, capricious, and magnanimous by fits and starts, frustrated by the presence of his feminist wife of African origins, who knows how to make himself exceptionally unfit and ignorant in front of his new acquaintance, but in the absurd game of the paradox, it is the same embarrassed and fascinated king who needs Bertoldo's tips to save himself more than once and not the other way around. In rare glimpses of sanity, Alboino knows right from the start that he is dealing with a tough nut, as the wise villain not only stands up to the sovereign but also manages to endear and amuse him effortlessly. The clever peasant becomes indirectly, unknowingly, and without desiring it, a new trusted advisor to the king.
The triangle closes with the cunning Fra’ Cipolla da Frosolone, embodied by the national Albertone, who with an Umbria-Ciociaria accent and thanks to a charismatic baritone timbre, attempts to subjugate the bigoted and gullible people by peddling relics and mementos of saints and deities; another young homegrown artist Maurizio Nichetti, in the role of the foolish and unfortunate son Bertoldino, proves to be a perfect sidekick for Tognazzi, disentangling himself in his own way among the chaotic father's vicissitudes and offering his contribution to exposing the initially rival religious for the foolhardy swap with the wife Marcolfa traded with wine, a blanket and Nerina, the beloved goose whose eggs Bertoldino hatches after his swap and subsequently, becoming an accomplice, proposes deceit and scams that Bertoldo himself will risk paying dearly for. I haven't yet mentioned Cacasenno, Bertoldo's grandson who will have the honor of "making it big at the king's expense," (if I may use a double entendre).
The feature film did not initially have an easy life and was never considered among his masterpieces, as the convenient and pretentious comparison with the impressive “Brancaleone” diminished it, making it appear to many as a work of inferior quality and far less epic and engaging. If I too followed a methodical objective evaluation purely related to a critical view, I would give an average grade to this film and would support a heresy if I defined it a brilliant gem of the David di Donatello, but Monicelli once again had the great merit of making us laugh and reflect with his well-known sarcasm, thanks to a more than dignified tale of a rascal and famous character of the farcical-popular tradition, beloved son of the miserable Po Valley countryside, innocent victim of a complicated, rough, and ancestral historical context, made even more emblematic by the singular and commendable performance of Ugo Tognazzi.
Monicelli finds and offers us the surreal expedient to give a real meaning to that social triangle rooted since the dawn of time: mock the Power, deride the Church, and promote a hilarious redemption of the people, so I up the ante and elevate my personal support to the penultimate dot for this "minor" work of the master, whom I esteem, admire, and would find it hard to devalue, even if he had shot the ad for Rotoloni Regina.
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