My Friends

An Italian comedy about a group of middle-aged friends in Florence. Five men meet regularly and spend their time playing jokes. What they call jokes are mostly planned and merciless pranks played on strangers: making a town believe it is about to be demolished, getting a man admitted to hospital, slapping people standing on a platform from a train window. The train scene is the film's best-known passage and holds a place of its own in Italian cinema. Underneath there is something else. All five are past forty and nothing they wanted has happened: marriages are not working, jobs do not satisfy, there is no money. The pranks stand in for all of it. The narrative does not make these men likeable. What they do is often cruel and the film does not hide it. Ugo Tognazzi, Philippe Noiret, Gastone Moschin and Duilio Del Prete are in the cast. Pietro Germi originally developed the project; when he fell ill and died, Mario Monicelli took over the direction and the film was dedicated to him. It was a great success in Italy and sequels followed. One of the genre's foundational works for anyone who likes Italian comedy and bitter humour. Before you watch, know this: the targets of the jokes are usually innocent people and the film does not present that as a fault.