The Great War

A film set on the Italian front in the First World War. Oreste and Giovanni are called up. Both do everything they can to shirk. They meet through a swindle. One takes money from the other in exchange for getting him out of service, and the two end up in the same unit. From there the film is a story of avoidance. Faked illness, lost orders, kitchen duty and the effort to stay behind the lines. The front is not in the background. Trenches, mud, lice, snow and artillery are the daily matter of the narrative. There is a woman. Costantina is someone the soldiers visit, and an unexpected closeness forms between her and Giovanni. The tone is comic. The jokes come from the pair's cowardice and their tricks for dodging the army. Then the film changes its tone. The two men are captured one night at a bridge and an Austrian officer stands in front of them. What the narrative is interested in is not heroism but chance: two shirkers are forced to make a decision at a point they never wanted, and the film does not enlarge that decision, nor does anyone witness it. That change of tone is the film's contested side. The narrative makes its audience laugh for ninety minutes and leaves them somewhere hard at the end. The production caused argument in Italy. Making comic material of the war and refusing to present the soldiers as heroes drew objections at the time. The film won the Golden Lion at Venice. Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, Silvana Mangano and Folco Lulli are in the cast. Mario Monicelli directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes Italian-style comedy and anti-war narrative. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a film that holds one tone; the narrative shifts entirely at the end.