The Monsters

Twenty short episodes. Each runs a few minutes and turns on a single behaviour: a man lying in traffic, a father teaching his son to steal, a relative calculating his own advantage at a funeral, a crowd photographing an accident. There is no connection between them. The subject is not individual wickedness but none of these people thinking themselves wicked. Nobody in the film believes they are breaking a rule; everyone believes what they are doing is reasonable, and that shared belief explains the title. The form is a sketch series and the lengths are uneven. Some episodes rest on one joke, others are genuinely painful. One near the end concerns a father watching his son injured in a boxing match, and the comedy is abandoned entirely there. It is counted among the harshest examples of Italian comedy. Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi take a different type in nearly every episode, and both expanded the range of character playing with this film. Dino Risi directs, with Age and Scarpelli and Ettore Scola on the screenplay. It succeeded well enough that sequels followed years later. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian satire and films in sketch form. Who it is not for: anyone expecting even quality; not all twenty episodes work.