The Marquis of Grillo

A film set in Rome at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Onofrio del Grillo is the son of a noble family. He has no work and passes his time playing pranks. The pranks are not harmless: he frightens people, humiliates them and then uses his name to escape punishment. The city is under papal rule and French armies are in Italy at the same time. Onofrio can sit and talk comfortably with both sides; his class gives him that freedom. One day he meets a charcoal burner who looks exactly like him. The man is drunk, poor and unknown to anyone. Onofrio plays a new joke: he puts him in his own place. That exchange is the best part of the film. When the charcoal burner wakes in the palace nobody believes him; however much he shouts he is taken for a nobleman, and it makes him look mad. What the narrative says is plain: who you are depends not on what you do but on where you were born. Alberto Sordi plays both Onofrio and the charcoal burner. Paolo Stoppa is in the cast. Mario Monicelli directed. The film counts among the classics of Italian comedy and is one of Sordi's most remembered parts. A strong choice for anyone who likes the Italian comic tradition and period satire. For a viewer wanting a likeable hero, Onofrio stays an unpleasant man to the end.