Scipio the African

Years after the Second Punic War, Scipio Africanus is a man nobody likes, in spite of having beaten Hannibal. He and his brother Scipio Asiaticus are accused of stealing five hundred talents belonging to Rome, and the accuser is Cato. Scipio defends himself, then learns that his brother is in fact guilty, takes the blame on himself, and, having understood that men of his moral standing get on people’s nerves, goes into exile. Luigi Magni wrote and directed; the film is a satire that uses ancient Rome to look at the politics of its own day and describes a society that has turned integrity into a defect. Marcello Mastroianni plays Scipio and his real-life brother Ruggero Mastroianni plays his brother, with Vittorio Gassman, Silvana Mangano, Turi Ferro and Woody Strode in the cast.