The Great War (1959)

To the ghost of Mario Monicelli, Ciao ancora! The Great War/La Grande Guerra is the second movie directed by you that I watched over the last two weeks. I come from a patriotic country. And the only war films I have seen are mostly the American and British ones and the awful Indian ones. But your film was unique compared to all of them. It is almost a film which a commercial film audience could enjoy though I guess the hardcore patriots would not identify with the two cowardly lead characters. But they are characters anyone with a soul could relate to. Your film hardly ever had a dull moment. It was hilarious. There were so many instances when I laughed my ass off.The traitorous deserting characters were so tongue in cheek. The characterization is pure genius. The Destouches character from Celine's Journey to the End of the Night came to mind while I watched Oreste and Giovanni stumble through their life in the army. You did a great job portraying the horror of war despite the antics of the two protagonists. It is always the poor and the wretched who are doomed to fight the wars of the rich. Not an original message, but your treatment of this theme was unique.Vittorio Gassman is such an amazing actor. In India, someone who looked like him would never play a loser. Now I have watched three movies where he plays total losers.I will be stealing more of your movies over the next few weeks, Mario.Best Regards, Pimpin.

I've only seen it twice, and it's already one of my favorite Italian movies of all time.Directed by legendary Mario Monicelli, this excellent comedy is set during WWI, when the Italians had to defend the river Piave from the Austrians.Two of the Italian soldiers happen to be really lazy cowards:Giovanni Busacca(Vittorio Gassman) from Milan and Oreste Jacovacci(Alberto Sordi) from Rome.They would rather spend their time at home with the mates and the ladies instead of fighting for their country.The only fights they have are with each other, both insulting the other one with their particular accents and dialects (you probably have to be Italian yourself to really appreciate most of the gags). The most interesting thing is perhaps how the two actors handle their roles: Sordi is very calm, controlled and "normal", while Gassman just can't stop being nervous, shouting and gesticulating all the time.Just like La Vita è Bella, this movie's purpose is to blame the horrors of war as well as making you laugh as much as you can.For those who like Italian cinema, La Grande Guerra is a must-see.

(Includes spoilers!) THE GREAT WAR stands as one of the essential films exemplifying the "commedia all'italiana" genre, that is, films which while being comedies often have a serious, even tragic undertone. Take our two heroes here, the Roman Oreste Jacovacci and the Milanese Giovanni Busacca (Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman). Caught in the insanity of World War I, this Abbott and Costello duo will do anything to escape danger and responsibility. After being fairly successful at the game, they have the misfortune to fall into the hands of the enemy Austrians, who want to pump them for information. But these two connivers and shirkers, in a rush of untapped patriotism, are unwilling to cause the possible deaths of their compatriots and so will chose or allow themselves to die instead. Circumstances turn cowards into heroes, much in the same way the con-artist played by De Sica in IL GENERALE DELLA ROVERE soars to lofty nobility at the end of that film, completed that same year. Talented director Mario Monicelli has filmed a gritty panorama of the World War I, Italy's first real film on the subject, in which the visuals and the overall "feel" are utterly convincing. The great cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno has captured the same period feeling that is akin to old-photographs-come-to-life that we would see later in his 1963 I COMPAGNI (THE ORGANIZER). Here he works in wide-screen CinemaScope that is especially effective in following movements of large numbers of soldiers in the battle scenes. The music by veteran Fellini-composer Nino Rota is appealing, and we get the songs and popular chants of the era. Silvana Mangano provides feminine interest as a crafty prostitute. This is a major Italian film of the 1950's and it should be far better know

La Grande guerra is one of the underseen, undervalued hordes of sublime European films that never see the light of day.In the 1960s in the centre of London there was the Academy, Oxford Street, Curzon, Mayfair and one of two other cinemas where the delights of the European cinema were on view. I have lived in Oslo since 1990. It is a cinema friendly city, but overloaded with Hollywood rubbish like most Bruce Willis actioners, or Nicolas Cage going for the money and not to expand his substantial talents as he has done in the past.This is not intellectual snobbery, just a cry from the heart about the lack of quality that is so endemic in current films."Crouching Tiger, Flaming Dragon" - I forget the real title is an example of American audiences accepting the quality of non-US movies."Die Hard"-type movies are good only to perhaps release aggression. It shows the typical obsessive need for America to breed only heroes. The villains with the fantastic exception of John Malkovich are usually superb English actors with foreign accents. Alan Rickman in "Die Hard" and Jeremy Irons in one of the mindless sequels.U571, now the most popular film in video shops where I live is such a devasting con-trick. A real piece of history when a British submarine acquired the Enigma decoding machine which made a significant difference for the Allies to get advance information about German war plans. The heroes are American. Sickening. Dramatic licence is one thing, but fraud is another. The event occurred six months before the US even entered the war. These are well-known complaints.Reminds one of the crassness of putting of Warner Bros. promoting "Objective Burma" in the autumn after the end of the war. Depiction of Errol Flynn (unfit for war service) winning against the Japanese military with not one British soldier in sight.Reminds me of the stories of a close friend and veteran of World War II. The US Army using earthmoving machinery to dig trenches when the British had shovels, the often sidelining of American troops due to the prevalence of veneral disease. The stories of British and other troops relieving American positions with a quarter of the manpower.In movies, with the exception of garishly-suited black pimps in stretch limos, the villains in movies and TV series used BMWs, and other European cars, which also were often beset with engine problems. Unlike the perfection of GM, Ford models etc._Don't get me wrong. With the exception of a mad Bellevue, New York psychiatrist I had once Americans are certainly charming, friendly people.La Grande Guerra is one of the thousands of films that ought to be revived every 10 years like a classic Disney feature.