An Average Little Man Movie Review

An Average Little Man is two films in one, really: half wildly funny, the other half gratuitously violent. Alberto Sordi, Shelley Winters, and Vincenzo Crocitti deliver superb performances as an excited family preparing for the son's (Crocitti) first examinations for employment. Their lives are normal enough until something goes hideously wrong, and the family crumbles for reasons that have nothing to do with them. The point here seems to be that life, as silly, dull, ordinary, petty, wonderful, or rewarding as it is, can be disrupted. And when it IS, the people who are left behind can never return to what they were before. When deep love and happiness end for Sordi's character, he replaces them with other feelings equally intense, that draw him into an entirely different life. Over 30 audience members missed this important point altogether when they walked out of a screening at 1977's San Francisco International Film Festival, perhaps feeling that writer/director Mario Monicelli illustrated his viewpoint with excessive bloodletting. Based on the book by Vincenzo Cerami. AKA: Un Borghese Piccolo Piccolo; Gran Bollito; A Very Little Man; An Average Man.

1977 120m/C IT Alberto Sordi, Shelley Winters, Vincenzo Crocitti, Romolo Valli, Renzo Carboni; D: Mario Monicelli; W: Mario Monicelli, Sergio Amidei; C: Mario Vulpiani; M: Giancarlo Chiaramello.