This is an extraordinary film. A pitiless portrait of human race. Scola describes the life of poor and marginal people with no compassion, showing all their miseries and perfidies. In this sense, the film is very close to another masterpiece, Viridiana from Bunuel. Everything in this movie is so disconcerting (beginning with the slum which has a magnificent vista to St. Peter's Cathedral) that it also remembers me of David Lynch's works. Besides all that, the film is absolutely hilarious.

I would not call this a comedy. Maybe a tragicomedy. It is true, some scenes are funny. But that's not the point. The point is to give an hyper-realistic, painful portrait of extreme ignorance and poverty, and its consequences. These people cannot afford to be good, honest, or have any positive family feeling. Like prisoners in a Nazi camp, they are deprived of all their humanity. The only thing that keeps the family united is the shack they live in, and the idea of taking Giacinto's money. I want to stress the fact that the movie _is_ realistic. There _were_ shantytowns around Rome in the seventies. And the people _were_ like that. The constantly mocking and jocking attitude is a trait of the Roman popular culture. It does not mean they're happy and light-hearted. So beware, this movie won't just give you a good laugh. If you like it, check this out as well, I don't think you can buy it, but the Italian RAI TV showed it some time ago:

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0073339/

I just saw this movie, 25 years after it was filmed. Splendid. It's an Almodovar movie before Almodovar entered the field. The other commentaries said it all.

I just want to point out the very last scene of the film.

It's so poignant! that young girl we saw throughout the whole movie, as maybe the only innocent and pure creature among all these abominable characters, being the only one that took care of all the children in the slum, helping in the house chores, etc.

Now she appears several months pregnant, doing the same things she always did, raising the first one in the morning, getting water for the family from a public faucet, and before getting to the faucet, she does a little ritualistic thing, she jumps over a low remnant of a wall and walks on its edge --dreaming of being a tightrope walker maybe?-- as the only pleasure she got as a child and even now, as a soon to be mother (because she's still a child).

That ending shows us that there is no hope for some people in this world, generation after generation they where born to be condemned to live forever under those conditions. Magnificent film!