Saturday, October 10, 10:00 a.m., Cinema Centrale Arthouse, Via Carlo Alberto 27

In collaboration with the Cineteca Nazionale.

Admission: Free.

International title: Sissignore
Original title: Sissignore
Director: Ugo Tognazzi
Screenplay: Tonino Guerra, Ugo Tognazzi, Luigi Malerba
Photography: Giuseppe Ruzzolini
Edit: Marcello Malvestito
Musica: Berto Pisano
Cast: Ugo Tognazzi, Gastone Moschin, Maria Grazia Buccella, Franco Fabrizi
Production: Fair Film
Distribution: Euro International Films

Oscar, driver of a well-known and powerful industrialist known to all as “the lawyer”, is so subservient to his superior that he accepts to spend three years in jail, taking responsibility for a tragic car accident,  promising that his life is going to change when he gets out of there. Instead, it would be only the beginning of a series of personal and work humiliations to which Oscar will have to surrender every time, trapped in a fictional world that regenerates itself. 

From the beginning, Tognazzi (in his masterfully directed third film) opts for an anti-realist choice describing corrupted industrialists and subdued employees. This masterpiece, released in 1968, at the peak of the protest, takes the shape of ruthless, cruel and bitter comedy on the power structure that preys upon the working class, and the latter, which in turn lets itself be drained by it, getting hypnotized by luxury. The set recalls a dystopian world and pop at the same time, in which “the lawyer” (splendid interpretation by Gastone Moschin as vampire, hypnotist and commander) does and undoes as he pleases, relentlessly blackmailing Oscar (an understated, wonderful Tognazzi—almost a sort of proto-Fantozzi).

Sissignore screens at the festival in its 2023 restored version by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC) – Cineteca Nazionale in Rome.

Ugo Tognazzi. He was one of the greatest actors of Italian cinema in the second half of the twentieth century. Unlike many of his peers, he possessed the ability to immerse himself fully in every character, moving between comedy and tragedy without ever turning into a parody of himself. Alongside a long acting career (across cinema, theatre, and television) that began in the early 1950s, Tognazzi directed six films—five for cinema and one for television—experimenting behind the camera as well and showcasing an indelible eclecticism. 

Director filmography: Il mantenuto (1961), Il fischio al naso (1967), Sissignore (1968), FBI – Francesco Bertolazzi investigatore (1970, miniserie tv in sei episodi), Cattivi pensieri (1976), I viaggiatori della sera (1979).