Ugly, Dirty and Bad

"Ugly, Dirty and Bad", the title alone gives you the perfect idea of what the film is all about, a film that is really disgusting but in a good Way, A Must Watch.

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/

After all these years I still come back to this movie, enjoying a true art. Although it shows the so-called-life of the people from the bottom, it's still a beautiful portrait of the human race in its essence: we are truly ugly, dirty and evil inside, behind all those masks we wear. This is "human" deprived of all the "civilization". The movie itself is a masterpiece. All those shots, casting, directing, music, dialogs, scenes that make you cry and laugh and disgust you simultaneously, all led by the master Scola. One should not review any movie without previously watching this one. This is what any movie should be: a picture of life. Sometimes funny, but mostly loathsome. And we're all just animals inside, just give us a chance to show it. Highly recommended as "a must".

Nino Manfredi, only professional actor here, shines in this Ettore Scola movie as Giacinto Mazzarella, a former convict with a long series of crimes and a huge, quirky family. He's violent, vulgar, amoral; he lives surrounded by dirt, squalor and poverty. Yet, he's funny. This movie is too funny! Scola directs a group of actors headed by Manfredi, who shows off an irresistible accent, and by Maria Luisa Santella as Iside, Giacinto's mistress, a fat, sweet but silly woman with an "ancient name". But it isn't a carefree comedy: behind the quips and the jokes there's a grotesque depiction of a miserable reality not very far from San Pietro, the most important Catholic building in the world. Not a perfect film, but a very good one.

Just a great film! I think that "Ugly, Dirty an Bad" has more quality than many "Hollywood-made-to-win-Oscars" films. Let's forget by now the humor side of the film; the content brought to the viewer shows as those kind of people try to survive day by day in extreme poverty and illness. Much more than a film to make people laugh, it's a documentary and a "finger-in-wound" in nowadays issues. I hope people after see that movie just don't remember the funniest scenes, but also the human side of the whole story pictured in there. Remember, everywhere we go, even if all around seems to be nice and beauty, somewhere, if we look carefully, we can discover "dark spots"... Recently in an opinion article about another film, in the heading section we could read "[...] Mary, satiated of removing thorns from the rose flowers in local factory [...]" That's the point: there's no roses without thorns! And if you see a rose without them, it's because someone had remove it before...