Fantozzi: White Collar Blues

The first film of Italian cinema's best-known office-worker character. Ugo Fantozzi is an ordinary accountant at an enormous company. He is excessively deferential to his superiors, invisible to his colleagues, and his luck never turns. That is the idea: the man is at the bottom of the system and never gets out of it. The structure is episodic. Getting up in the morning and making it to the clock, the company's organised events, the football match between the married and the unmarried staff, New Year's Eve and what happens to his car are each told separately. Among the most-quoted gags: he is accidentally walled into the company's old toilets and nobody notices for eighteen days. Paolo Villaggio created the character, first writing him in books and then playing him. Fantozzi entered Italian as a word and came to describe a type of employee. Luciano Salce directed. The film was a great success in 1975 and grew into a long series. It was later included among the hundred Italian films to be preserved. A foundational production within its genre for anyone who likes Italian comedy and office humour. Before you watch, know this: the humour is built on humiliating the character continuously and some jokes look harsh from here.