The Boom

Vittorio De Sica's 1963 film is a hard satire aimed at Italy's economic miracle years. Giovanni, played by Alberto Sordi, keeps borrowing in order to sustain the habits of a wife from a wealthy family. Eventually he finds a way out: he will sell one of his eyes to a rich businessman. That he panics just before the operation sums up the whole film. The screenplay is by Cesare Zavattini, and the eye for poverty in the postwar work he and De Sica made together is here turned onto prosperity instead. Holding horror and comedy at the same time is what puts it among the sharpest examples of Italian comedy. It asks who the boom was actually for and does not soften the answer. Who it's for: viewers who want Italian comedy and a critique of capitalism in the same film. Who it's not for: anyone expecting comfortable humour; the laugh usually sits on the thing that disturbs.