Roberto Benigni
Il Mostro

In these days when comments (both positive and negative) about Roberto Benigni regarding his participation in the Sanremo Festival abound, the middle-high rank director who had established himself in Italy before 1998 comes to mind, before "Life is Beautiful" consecrated his genius at the global level for those who hadn’t taken advantage of films like "Night on Earth" and "Son of the Pink Panther" (both U.S. productions).

Benigni is much more homespun and downscaled in "The Monster," a blockbuster hit in 1994/95; watching it today, he seems like a green youth compared to the giant he wanted to present himself as in the following years, partly due to his own merits (which are truly many) and partly due to national pride. In this film, Roberto Benigni plays Loris, a layabout and social misfit who lives alone and gets by as best as he can with small thefts and clever tricks that allow him to maintain his home at the expense of the building manager (Jean Claude Brialy), who would greatly enjoy seeing him evicted. The only person he sometimes confides in is Pascucci (Ivano Marescotti), an acquaintance who occasionally finds him some odd jobs and in reality cares little about the unfortunate Loris. Meanwhile, the police are investigating a serial killer who has been spreading terror in the city by raping and killing women for several years, and as fate would have it, due to a series of unfortunate events, Loris will find himself being the main suspect of this series of crimes, with agent Jessica Rossetti (Nicoletta Braschi) set to tail him in an attempt to tempt him and catch him red-handed (or rather, "with his hand in the cookie jar").

Just like the earlier "Johnny Stecchino," this film relies on the basic mechanism of comedy involving mistaken identity, resulting in a series of episodes that increasingly make the unfortunate protagonist appear on the list of suspects. Benigni here is constantly in rhythm; the comedic schemes follow one another at a frenetic pace, giving the audience no chance to catch their breath nor, at the same time, to reconsider the misunderstanding of which Loris has been a victim from the start; some gags are memorable, including the crouched walk, the speeches on inflation to distract from Jessica’s provocations, or the strategies devised by the protagonist to deter tenants who want to take over his apartment. Benigni, however, as usual, combines humor with social analysis and particularly here, aside from the optional connection with the Monster of Florence, addresses the theme of the outsider, the unfortunate, the figure rejected by society simply because they do not conform to the norms it imposes: Loris is indeed a monster but seen as such by those who adhere to pre-established behavioral rules, by those who always say "yes sir," by those who sheepishly follow the majority. Anyone who strays from the guideline set by society becomes automatically a derided and ostracized reject. A little horror comedy, in which the histrionic Benigni demonstrates that he knows perfectly how never to cross that line beyond which one falls into the rhetorical and the banal; there is nothing truly new here but it still manages to make you laugh, and a lot.

After "The Monster" will come "Life Is Beautiful" and Roberto Benigni will increasingly thin out his film production, aware that he has now reached the peak of his experience and expression in this field. A Benigni now distant, who raises much less of an uproar than the current one. In any case, considering the current situation, I side with those who appreciated his intervention at Sanremo.