Tinto Brass
Il Disco Volante

THE REVIEW

It was 1964, and evidently, they knew how to make films.

It's incredible to look at these absolutely homemade and provincial works today, and yet, at the same time, so global and perfect.

Undoubtedly, before the arrival of the "cabaregists," the collapse (or death) of the sacred monsters, and before the mass-television dominance that plagues us all, we knew how to make great cinema.

Including this charming gentleman with a big cigar always in his mouth, today entangled in a mess of breasts and bums that not even our presidentdelaconsiglio can compare to....

Well, even this jolly fellow Tinto knew how to make great cinema. And the traces, even if it seems impossible, can be seen in his later works, which are perhaps lesser and certainly more "piggish." There has always been a love and a particular taste for framing and color, even if, in recent decades, these have been entirely devoted to the worship of the derriere and its surroundings.

Whatever one thinks of our Tinto (whom I personally adore), he demonstrated a true artistic ability in the past, no less than that of the great masters of Italian cinema of the late twentieth century.

Here the story is as simple as it is entertaining: a flying saucer, complete with Martians, lands in the Veneto countryside.

A stunning Alberto Sordi, engaged in the interpretation of no less than four characters, is as amusing as he is talented. He doesn't ham it up as he would when, many years later, he would start directing himself, and he manages to be impeccable in everything, even in dialects. For the most passionate viewers, one of the four characters is essentially the wonderful "Cavo Malconcio" that graces "I Nuovi Mostri," here with a homosex tendency not perceivable there, directed comically both at the Carabinieri and the Martian. The female roles are played by Monica Vitti and Anna Magnani, whose talent needs no emphasis.

The film's absolute modernity lies in its structure, like a mockumentary, initially with interviews, which would be (a coincidence?) the future trademark of Woody Allen, as well as in its "moral": behind the comedy, it is indeed a film that denounces the narrow-minded, profiteering provincial mentality that - evidently always has - characterized our desolate yet beautiful lands.

Tinto was already revolutionary back then, much more than he appeared on the surface. And probably much more than he has been today and yesterday, in the "piggish" works of maturity.

In short: hidden gem, to absolutely recover and disseminate, to remind us of how we were.