''Everybody Go Home'' ( it, Tutti a casa) is a 1960 Italian
comedy-drama film
Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...
directed by
Luigi Comencini
Luigi Comencini (; 8 June 1916 – 6 April 2007) ''The Guardian'' was an Italian
. It features an international cast including the U.S. actors
Martin Balsam
Martin Henry Balsam (November 4, 1919 – February 13, 1996) was an American actor. He had a prolific career in character roles in film, in theatre, and on television. An early member of the Actors Studio, he began his career on the New Yo ...
Serge Reggiani
Serge Reggiani (2 May 1922 – 23 July 2004) was an Italian-French actor and singer. He was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy and moved to France with his parents at the age of eight.
After studying acting at the Conservatoire des arts cinématogr ...
. Nino Manfredi was rejected for the starring role because
Alberto Sordi
Alberto Sordi (15 June 1920 – 24 February 2003) was an Italian actor, voice actor, singer, comedian, director and screenwriter.
Early life
Born in Rome to a schoolteacher and a musician and the last of five children, Sordi was named in hon ...
wanted it.
The film is set during the
Allied invasion of Italy
The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place from 3 September 1943, during the Italian campaign of World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army ...
in 1943. It is one of the most famous films of the
Commedia all'italiana
Commedia all'italiana (, pl. Commedie all'italiana, "Comedy in the Italian way") or Italian-style comedy is an Italian film genre born in Italy in the 1950s and developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely considered to have started with Mar ...
genre. It also belongs to a large genre of Italian films about Italy during the chaos after the invasion and double occupation of September 1943 - others include ''
Rome, Open City
''Rome, Open City'' ( it, Roma città aperta, also released as ''Open City'') is a 1945 Italian neorealist war drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini and co-written by Sergio Amidei, Celeste Negarville and Federico Fellini. Set in Rome in ...
'', ''
Paisan
''Paisan'' ( it, Paisà ) is a 1946 Italian neorealist war drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini. In six independent episodes, it tells of the Liberation of Italy by the Allied forces during the late stage of World War II. The film premier ...
Two Women
''Two Women'' ( it, La ciociara , rough literal translation "The Woman from Ciociaria") is a 1960 war drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica from a screenplay by Cesare Zavattini and De Sica, based on the novel of the same name by Alberto ...
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
''Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom'' ( it, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, billed on-screen ''Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom'' on English-language prints and commonly referred to as simply ''Salò'' []) is a 1975 horror film, horror art film dir ...
''.
Plot
Along the Venetian seaside, on the morning of September 8, 1943, Alberto Innocenzi, junior NCO of the Royal Italian Army is shocked when (in response to the separate surrender signed by the Badoglio government in Cassibile) the former allies of the
Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...
surround and take by storm the base where he's stationed. Innocenzi, along with some disbanded soldiers, manages to distance the German troops and is thoroughly shocked when, contrary to his plan of finding a higher echelon to which to report, most of the men accept the fact that the war is over for them and "everybody should just go home".
This reaction at first angers him, but in the end he joins army engineer Ceccarelli and sergeant Fornaciari in discarding their uniforms for civilian clothes and heading southwards for a veritable odyssey along the Italian "boot", cut in two by German and Allied occupation and wracked by partisan warfare, bloody reprisals, German press-ganging and other perils. The trio meets a band of anti-fascist guerrillas but decline to join them (while an Italian army captain they met along the road does). Later Innocenzi, caught in the "everybody for himself" mentality which seems to dominate the landscape, succumbs to the temptation of abandoning his mates to help a sultry black marketeer smuggle a load of flour to
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
, as she needs a driver and does not have room for any other passengers. The deal goes awry due to a mechanical failure in a rubble-strewn town where the famished populace plunders the lorry, and after some recriminations and a brief scuffle, Innocenzi rejoins his companions. They witness the killing of a rookie, a naive Italian soldier who tried to protect a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
girl during a German roundup; finally they manage to reach Fornaciari's rural home.
The former sergeant is delighted of having returned to his young wife, children and old father and offers Innocenzi and Ceccarelli hospitality for the night; his wife reveals that the family has been hiding a former U.S. POW who escaped from the Folpiano prison camp to protect him from the fascist militia patrols and Fornaciari, albeit grudgingly, accepts to keep protecting him. After a darkly humorous polenta dinner (served farm-style with salsa over a wooden table, where Innocenzi and the U.S. officer end up arguing over the right of reaching for the sausage length placed at the table's centre) they all go to sleep but a nighttime fascist patrol breaks in and manages to find the Allied serviceman. Amidst the children's cries and his wife's weeping, Fornaciari is hauled away toward a grim fate, and Ceccarelli and Innocenzi flee the premises without being able to help.
The couple manages to reach Littoria (now Latina), where Innocenzi's widowed father lives alone and offers Ceccarelli (who is Neapolitan) to stay a few days before resuming his travel south. Innocenzi is shocked when his father introduces him to a fascist party leader who is recruiting men for the army of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, the fascist puppet state instituted by the Germans after the liberation of Benito Mussolini from his Gran Sasso exile. His father angrily responds to his objections, citing the misery he's living in and all the sacrifices he incurred to allow make him to study and become an army officer; a deep rift is created between father and son, and Innocenzi asks Ceccarelli to take him south to
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
as well, to which the engineer happily consents.
However, Naples is in grimmer conditions than Rome, directly on the line of fire after the Allied landing at Salerno, barely kept under control by brutal German detachments who round up able-bodied men to send them to Germany as slave workers. To reach the city the duo passes through a roadblock manned by fanatical, hungry fascists; Ceccarelli, generously chooses to sacrifice a suitcase of delicacies he was meant to deliver to the wife of his commanding officer (who had signed his dismissal on health grounds due to his persistent
stomach ulcer
The stomach is a muscular, hollow organ in the gastrointestinal tract of humans and many other animals, including several invertebrates. The stomach has a dilated structure and functions as a vital organ in the digestive system. The stomach i ...
). The situation (with the offering readily accepted by the roadblock patrol) causes Innocenzi much panic, having had raided the case during a night-time train trip and substituting the goods with stones and newspaper sheets; he urges his companion to run away before the fascists open it, but they are unsuccessful.
Innocenzi and Ceccarelli are pressed in an
Organisation Todt
Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi. The organisation was responsible for a huge range of engineering pr ...
rubble-clearing chain gang and manage to escape when the city rises against the occupiers in the Four days of Naples. Desperately trying to reach his home, which is just a few blocks away, Ceccarelli is cut down in a hail of German fire, at which time Innocenzi decides that the real war to be waged is that against the Nazi occupiers and joins an insurgent band offering to man the BredaM 37 machine gun they have captured but cannot operate. With a renewed stern look on his face, Innocenzi opens fire against the Germans, bringing the movie to a close.
Cast
*
Alberto Sordi
Alberto Sordi (15 June 1920 – 24 February 2003) was an Italian actor, voice actor, singer, comedian, director and screenwriter.
Early life
Born in Rome to a schoolteacher and a musician and the last of five children, Sordi was named in hon ...
: Lieutenant Alberto Innocenzi
*
Eduardo De Filippo
Eduardo De Filippo (; 24 May 1900 – 31 October 1984), also known simply as ''Eduardo'', was an Italian actor, director, screenwriter and playwright, best known for his Neapolitan works ''Filumena Marturano'' and '' Napoli Milionaria''. Consid ...
: Mr. Innocenzi, father of Alberto
*
Serge Reggiani
Serge Reggiani (2 May 1922 – 23 July 2004) was an Italian-French actor and singer. He was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy and moved to France with his parents at the age of eight.
After studying acting at the Conservatoire des arts cinématogr ...
: Assunto Ceccarelli
*
Martin Balsam
Martin Henry Balsam (November 4, 1919 – February 13, 1996) was an American actor. He had a prolific career in character roles in film, in theatre, and on television. An early member of the Actors Studio, he began his career on the New Yo ...
Guido Celano
Guido Celano (19 April 1904 – 7 March 1988) was an Italian actor, voice actor and film director. He appeared in 120 films between 1931 and 1988. He also directed two Spaghetti Westerns: '' Cold Killer'' and '' Gun Shy Piluk''. He was born ...
: Fascist
*
Didi Perego
Didi Perego (13 April 1935 – 28 June 1993) was a statuesque Italian actress who appeared in more than 80 films and television shows. She made her film debut in 1959's '' Death of a Friend''. The same year, she starred in perhaps her best-know ...
: Caterina Brisigoni, flour dealer
*
Achille Compagnoni
Achille Compagnoni (26 September 1914 – 13 May 2009) was an Italian mountaineer and skier. Together with Lino Lacedelli on 31 July 1954 he was in the first party to reach the summit of K2.
Biography
Compagnoni was born in Santa Caterina d ...
*Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists Nastro d'Argento
**Winner: Best Production (Migliore Produzione) -
Dino De Laurentiis
Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis (; 8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010) was an Italian-American film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers who brought Italian cinema to the international scene at the end of World War II. He ...
*
2nd Moscow International Film Festival
The 2nd Moscow International Film Festival was held from 9 to 23 July 1961. The Grand Prix was shared between the Japanese film ''The Naked Island'' directed by Kaneto Shindo and the Soviet film '' Clear Skies'' directed by Grigori Chukhrai.
Ju ...