He Who Hesitates Is Lost

Two workers at a factory, Antonio and Giuseppe, are competing for the same foreman's job. Both want the promotion and each waits for the other to slip. Efficiency consultants are walking the floor with stopwatches and the workers are being asked to go faster. While the two men set traps for each other, neither notices that the system is using them both. The subject is not promotion but competition setting workers against each other. Antonio and Giuseppe are in fact on the same side; the film says so plainly but through comedy, without lecturing. The form is classical Italian farce: fast dialogue, comedy of types and exchanges of insults. The Totò and Peppino De Filippo pairing works here too and their scenes are the film's main draw. The production belongs to Sergio Corbucci's period before the westerns. He made a great many commercial comedies through the fifties and sixties, and there is no visible link between them and the hard genre he later became known for. Aroldo Tieri is in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like Totò and classical Italian workplace comedy. Who it is not for: anyone after an original narrative; the film repeats the duo's known template and holds no surprises.