This is one of the movies I can easily watch over and over again. It is built around two opposite characters that represent two Italies living in the same country but viscerally antithetic. Vittorio Gassman is an entrepeneur with right wing leanings but overall interested in business and not really concerned about values and morality: smart, charming, friendly but in the end self centered and not interested in anything but himself, one of those that made fortune during the boom years because of their cunning and recklessness.

On the opposite side of the sprectrum, Ugo Tognazzi is a left-wing prosecutor, a man of principle always controlled, serious, stiff, bitter. He looks with contempt to the Italian ruling class responsible in his eyes of creating a monstrous immoral country in which the powerful could act freely for their own profit at the expenses of the greater good.

The action develops around a crime and the story turns are never obvious nor facile. Around the two main characters a diverse crowd portrays different classes and human kinds that could be found in those years.

The result is a bitter and cynical portrait of a society where there are no real good nor bad, as everyone is following his own agenda to which we can, to bigger or smaller degrees, relate. What I like about dino risi movies is that they don't provide, in highly politicised years, any easy populist target (that you can find for example in the period in Elio Petri's movies) and, even if we see the very evident damages engineer Santenocito (Gassmann) does with his activities, we cannot say that prosecutor Bonifazi (Tognazzi) is in the end that scrupulous and thorough good impartial judge. What is left is an incompatible moral and ideological clash without compromises.

p.s. As an Italian that grew up in the 90s in a left-wing family, to me this movie resonates incredibly well with the clash between supportes of Berlusconi (whose personality is extremely close to Santenocito's) and the, he claimed (with some truth) "red" judiciary and left-wing Italians. In general, until the first decade of the XXI century this reciprocal mistrust and ongoing accusation between left wing and right wing was very alive in Italy. We on the left believed to be morally superior people opposing a small-minded business-oriented hedonist hypocrite right and centre that ended up representing all the evil we perceived in "Italianness"(once more, exactly what this 70s movie is about). Today that partisan spirit is not as vibrant and alive, but this is another story

Alas, to express how much I disagree with the comment let by Artemis-9 would require to completely spoil the superb plot crafted by Age/Scarpelli. And well, I can't do this to my favorite screenwriters of all times ! ("Big Deal on Madonna Street", "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", "We All Loved Each Other So Much" and many others). But let's at least say that the last half-hour of this Dino Risi popular comedy, culminating in an hilarious transformist tour de force by comic genius Vittorio Gassman, is one of the most breath-taking finale I have seen at the movies. With one more narrative twist à l'italienne, suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, the satirical layer and the detective-story layer of the plot suddenly merge and then you realize... well, I can't tell you what you realize. In an interview about this movie - an interview in French with film critic Jean Gili I have here at hand; no surprise, there are no Dino Risi interviews in English - director Dino Risi says : « All in all, if I were forced to choose, I may prefer an openly corrupt businessman (Gassman]) to an hypocritically ambiguous judge (Tognazzi). » Move over, Artemis9 ! In nome del popolo italiano, if need be to say, is one of the peaks of "commedia all italiana" (1958-1978) - the most corrosive, devastating and entertaining satirical spree in movie history ! Vitriol pouring all over Italy - and the world. Yet because these movies are based upon tragicomic (or "comedy/drama") narrative canvas, they are also surprisingly taking, even moving, which is pretty rare when it comes to satire - a genre reputed, often with good reason, for speaking more to the head than the heart.

But not commedia all'italiana. Joke, joke, another joke... surprise! a tragic punch. Another joke. Pow! Another tragic punch. Except you never know when it's gotta hit you in the face. Prepare yourself, be gentle to yourself and watch this old movie from Cinecittà's Golden Age, for it is really a gem. We in North America never did anything like this.

And needless to say : Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi are eternal.