Ecce bombo

Moretti's second film, and the one in which a generation in Italy recognised itself. It opened on 8 March 1978; a week later Aldo Moro was kidnapped and the country entered the darkest stretch of the years of lead. Four friends, former student militants of the 1968 generation. They have withdrawn from politics, none of them knows what to do, and the meetings, the consciousness-raising groups and the attempts to wait for sunrise by the sea all break off half-finished. Its most quoted lines come from there. The question Michele Apicella asks on the telephone became one of the most cited sentences in Italian cinema: will I be noticed more if I come and stand off to one side, or if I do not come at all? Moretti directs and plays Michele. It competed at Cannes in 1978, his first time in competition. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian cinema and films that mock their maker's own generation. Who it is not for: anyone without the period. The film speaks almost entirely in the Italian left's jargon of those years, and most of the jokes are tied to that language.