Gli onorevoli

Election season. Candidates from different parties do whatever it takes to get into parliament: rallies, promises, bargains and blackmail where required. The film follows five candidates across five sections, and what they have in common is chasing the seat rather than any political position. The subject is not politics but the relationship with the voter being entirely commercial. The candidates know what people want to hear and say exactly that; none of them believes it. The film distributes this evenly across every party regardless of ideology. The form is arranged as sketches with weak links between them. Some sections are one joke stretched out and some are genuinely sharp. The best-known element is the candidate played by Totò. His campaign slogan outlived the film in Italy and is still used to mock political propaganda; it is one of the few lines to pass from cinema into everyday speech there. Sergio Corbucci directs. Franca Valeri and Peppino De Filippo are in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian political satire and Totò. Who it is not for: anyone looking for coherence; the film proceeds in sections and they are not of equal quality.