The Comedy Is Over

Abstract

In the previous chapters, I chose to follow a hybrid approach to my study, not only thematic but also chronological. In the first chapter, I investigated comedy and film comedy in general and discussed early Italian film comedy from the Fascist years. In the second, I explored postwar comedy, neorealismo rosa, and Monicelli’s I soliti ignoti—movies that, in my view, have little or nothing to do with commedia all’italiana. In Chapter 3, I analyzed early examples of commedia all’italiana made in the 1950s and introduced my argument that the “Boom” society was the product—not the cause—of a crisis in masculinity during the postwar years. In the fourth, I discussed the specific humor of this film genre, which can be compared to Pirandello’s umorismo and then examined two pivotal movies directed by Dino Risi in the early 1960s, the golden years of commedia all’italiana: Una vita difficile and Il sorpasso. Chapter 5 investigated the many psychopathol-ogies of its protagonists with examples ranging from 1950s films on, with examples from the mid to late 1960s and later. A chronological overview was necessary to show how the increasing well-being of the Italian middle class that came with the economic miracle also brought about a proportional growth of distress. Regardless of personal success, the “Boom” did not cure male anxiety but rather quite the opposite.

Kids … wish they’d drop dead [li possino ammazzà]!

(Nino Manfredi in Brutti, sporchi e cattivi)