The Terrace

A party on a terrace in Rome. The guests are screenwriters, journalists, politicians and television people, all of whom once met on the left and are now stuck in the middle of their careers. The film tells the same night several times, through different pairs of eyes. It is not interested in politics. It is interested in creative blockage: the writer cannot write, the producer cannot find an idea, everyone lives in the shadow of work they did before. Ettore Scola builds it as the portrait of a generation and keeps moving between the ridiculous and the sad. The form is episodic: each section is one character's story, and the terrace is the place the film returns to each time. Scola wrote it with Age and Furio Scarpelli, one of the best-known writing teams in Italian comedy. It won Best Screenplay at the 33rd Cannes Film Festival, and Carla Gravina was named Best Supporting Actress. The cast is as heavy as the period allowed: Vittorio Gassman, Ugo Tognazzi, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Marcello Mastroianni and Stefania Sandrelli. Who it is for: viewers who like the bitter vein of Italian comedy and satire of the intellectual class. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a story to follow. The film circles the same party for two and a half hours and nobody gets anywhere.