Word: italia
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...cannot understand how anyone could give Viva Italia! a favorable review. Now, your run-of-the-mill jerk armed with a typewriter might praise anything, seemingly at random--but when some of your big names, like, for example, Vincent Canby, give a film a good review, you usually figure it must have something going for it. Viva Italia! might, indeed, have something going for it, but other than a few good sequences, I couldn't possibly find them. This ostensible comedy is the worst, most offensive legitimate film I have seen in a long time I can only repeat what...
...Viva Italia! consists of a series of nine brief vignettes, which taken together appear to reflect the current condition of social humor in Italy. Or at least the directorial triumvirate's conception of what Italians think is funny. But the big problem is that very little in the film is actually amusing, and much of it is either revolting, childish, or well outside any reasonable bounds of humor, no matter how sick...
...fairness, though, Viva Italia! does have a couple of good scenes among the tasteless dreck that compounds the greater part of this 90-minute exercise in self-discipline (it took a lot of selfdiscipline to remain in my seat). Alberto Sordi comes up with a truly funny bit as the sybaritic driver of a Rolls-Royce, who encounters an accident victim lying in the road. Although this idly rich fellow is on his way to a family dinner, he is willing to take the poor victim to the hospital. Unfortunately, no hospital will take the dude, and while Sordi prattles...
...with any foreign film, Viva Italia! has a tremendous problem, as very few people in the audience can actually comprehend the dialogue. Italian is such a rapid-fire language that, despite the presence of fairly complete subtitles, you cannot help but feel that you are missing a lot of what might actually be funny. But probably isn't, in this case...
Orson Welles Cinema--Mass Ave--Viva Italia, 4, 5:50, 7:50, 9:45. Orson Welles II--Madame Rosa, 4, 6, 8, 9:55. Orson Welles III--Outrageous, 4, 5:55, 8:10, 10:05. Friday and Saturday midnight shows--The Harder They Come, Night of the Living Dead and Superman...