A guide to the glorious works and filmmakers who make the world laugh with them. It is suitable for those lovers of enduring, wry, over-the-top, side-splitting humor on film.

This book explores the work of Dino Risi with The Easy Life (1962), The Monsters (1963), The New Monsters (1977), and Scent of a Woman (1974), Mario Monicelli with Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), The Great War (1959), and Amici miei (1975), also Pietro Germi with Divorce Italian Style (1961), as well as filmmakers as disparate as Federico Fellini with Amarcord (1973), Ettore Scola with Down and Dirty (1976), Lina Wertmüller with Swept Away (1974), Luigi Comencini with The Scientific Cardplayer (1972) and many others. In addition the volume explains how the genre was able to reveal during two decades (1960s and 1970s) many acting talents and confirmed the future legacy of picturesque icons such as Alberto Sordi, Nino Manfredi, Vittorio Gassman, Stefania Sandrelli, Claudia Cardinale, Monica Vitti, Giancarlo Giannini and Ugo Tognazzi, all of whom depicted the Italian resilience in the utmost idiosyncratic manner.

The subject of this book is one of the most important in Italian film history. Commedia all'italiana was a series of comedy films based on farse that dealt with current events, not evasive, but with their bold humor very pointed about societal difficulties.   --Mario Monicelli, director of The Great War (La grande guerra) and Big Deal on Madonna Street (I soliti ignoti).