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.

This savage attack on the judicial system in Italy emerges to be an unsung masterpiece which sees director Risi and stars Ugo Tognazzi and Vittorio Gassaman at the top of their game. While necessarily talky and heavy-going, the film’s coup is in the way it makes various dense and relevant points on the state of the country at the time within the confines of a straight (and engrossing) thriller plot. The end result, therefore, offers stimulating characterization (by pitting the two leads against one another, Tognazzi as the dogged magistrate and Gassman as a smug industrialist-cum-murder suspect) alongside memorable – and often caustic – vignettes denouncing bureaucracy, big business, class and generational differences, and what have you. The director’s deft fusion throughout of the mundane with elements of outright fantasy, then, proves to be the icing on the cake – while, holding it all together, is a marvelous score by Carlo Rustichelli.

To name just a few significant moments: Tognazzi, taking a break from work to go fishing, sees his solitary puny catch being pinched by a hovering sea-gull…only to have the latter drop dead before his very eyes from the polluted waters (a result of the excess industrial waste being dumped into it by Gassman’s factory situated nearby!); Gassman being picked up for interrogation about the murder of a call girl (“Euro-Cult” starlet Ely Galleani) from a fancy-dress party, where he dons the outfit of an Ancient Roman soldier; the collapse of a structure within the law-courts building right at the moment when Tognazzi and an overly lenient colleague are having a noisy row; Gassman’s various disastrous attempts to provide an alibi for the night Galleani died (having failed to procure his senile card-playing father’s backing in this regard, he has him committed to a mental asylum!); an irrelevant but uproarious moment when, during a ceremony in which Gassman is himself a recipient, an elderly man falls flat on his face in the process of retrieving his own accolade.

But, undeniably, the highlights of the film are the definitive tete-a'-tete between the leads on a rain-soaked, trash-covered beach (which Gassman has set up in an attempt to familiarize himself with – and, by extension, soften – the unflinching magistrate) and the surreal Fellini-esquire finale: as the whole case ostensibly comes crumbling down on Tognazzi, via the retrieved diary of Galleani, amid a rambunctious street festival on the occasion of Italy’s triumph over England in a soccer match; the extent of the magistrate’s bias/misguided zealousness is symbolized here by his seeing Gassman everywhere he looks, thus presenting an opportunity for the latter to indulge himself yet again in a number of grotesque make-ups a' la I MOSTRI (1963) – which, coincidentally, had preceded this very title in my ongoing Dino Risi tribute...

Italian film industry "blessed" us with countless films of an impossibly crude and vulgar nature disguised as "social satire." Fortunately, now and then it also produced films like "In Nome Del Popolo Italiano." The film is the usual social satire that depicts rich people as the eternally "evil" ones, out to oppress the people, and to exempt - or try to exempt - themselves from the law. However, what makes INDPI so refreshing, and different from other films in the genre is that it also shows us that the, uh, proletariat can be just as bad, especially when pushed by the bigotry of a rigid ideology. I totally agree with Risi's comment that, if forced to choose, he'd rather be the openly corrupt guy than the hypocritically ambiguous one.

Gassman and Tognazzi are brilliant, as usual. Or at least, as usual when given the chance to stray from the sex-farce-cum-social-indictment silliness the Italian film industry was so painfully famous in the 60s and 70s.

This is a good film. Give it a chance.