Despite thinking it is unnecessary, the police chief dutifully complies when he is ordered by a higher-up to interview everyone who has claimed to have seen the flying saucer. What follows provides insight into human motivation and human nature, and is also hysterically funny.
The story uses the plot device of a supposedly non-existent object, the flying saucer, like a psycho therapist uses a rorschach inkblot. But of course, while rorschach inkblots are real printed copies of real inkblots, there is no such thing as a flying saucer. Of course. Or is there? Well, what is it then that is stimulating people's imaginations, revealing what is on their mind, revealing what they care about, showing us "who they are," and where they are situated in a small town's class hierarchy in 1964 Italy? Such things are revealed by what it is that they tell us they have seen, and by the way that they tell us that. Seem to me that what they have seen is not as important to the story as what they say about what they've seen. I think that what matters is what we learn about the *witnesses* to the flying saucer, if it exists, is what we learn about the people, from their testimony.
One reviewer called this movie "light fare." It is not what I would call light fare. Perhaps I might call it deeply penetrating satire. At any rate, I found every minute of this movie to be a delight. One of my favorite movies of all times.
Now, is there actually a flying saucer, or not? Watch the movie and find out.
