In Ettore Scola's 1976 comedy, four generations of an impoverished extended family are packed into a squalid one-room hovel on the outskirts of Rome. As the title suggests, there's nothing sentimental in this satirical portrait of a clan at the bottom rungs of society. Patriarch Giacinto (Nino Manfredi) was half-blinded in an industrial accident and he hoards the one-million-lire insurance settlement, refusing to spend any of it on his family—a bunch of hustlers, prostitutes, small-time crooks, and layabouts who are all trying to pry the money from him. Giacinto is just as awful as they are; at one point he hires a buxom prostitute, lavishes gifts upon her, and then takes her back home to share his bed with his bitter wife. And that's when the family hatches a plot to murder Giacinto (at his grandchild's christening, no less) and split the dough. This is not the sympathetic portrait of Italy's poor witnessed in the neorealist films of the 1940s and ‘50s or the socially progressive dramas of the ‘60s but rather a raucous, raunchy comedy set in a village built out of castoffs and scavenged junk on a hill (overlooking a prosperous Rome) where the inhabitants are in perpetual arguments and screaming matches. The energy and black humor sustain this edgy film, which ultimately paints a portrait of a pitiless cycle of anger, abuse, and codependency that no one escapes. Scola won the Best Director award at Cannes for Ugly, Dirty & Bad, which is presented here with extras including audio commentary by film scholar Richard Peña. Aimed at fans of satire and foreign cinema that pushes the boundaries of good taste, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)
Ugly, Dirty & Bad
Film Movement, 116 min., in Italian w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $29.95, Blu-ray: $39.95 Volume 32, Issue 1
Ugly, Dirty & Bad
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