Un borghese piccolo piccolo

I watched An Average Little Man because I like revenge thrillers. However, I soon realized that I had picked the wrong movie for that type of entertainment.

Giovanni Vivaldi (Alberto Sordi) is a mid-level public official, somewhere between an accountant and a lawyer. He is liked well enough, but he has never really risen in his department. Giovanni's son is about to enter the workforce, and Giovanni is determined to land him a job in his department. He takes the boy around and introduces him to the superiors and even asks for help amongst his friends in the department. One suggests that Giovanni join the Freemasons, but Giovanni's wife (Shelley Winters) is a staunch Catholic and is opposed to the idea. Giovanni decides to ignore her and go through with the initiation.

This is pretty much the first hour of An Average Little Man. It is a family drama with some odd humor along the way (the hair obsessed supervisor). At just over halfway, something tragic happens which changes Giovanni. This event puts Giovanni on a path that will end at a destination similar to the one that Charles Bronson's character ended up in the last scene of the first Death Wish movie, a film clearly the filmmakers of An Average Little Man are aware of.

I have to admit that the film bored me for most of its first half. Some of my reaction might be based on watching the film for the wrong reasons. If you want to see a film like Rolling Thunder or the original Get Carter, this is not the one to watch. Also, since I have only ever seen one other movie with Alberto Sordi, so I could not appreciate how the role of Giovanni was different for Sordi, better known for light comedies. In fact, only one scene grabbed me, when Giovanni goes to pay his respects at a "grave." The coffin of the deceased lies stacked on other coffins in a warehouse with mourners crowding around, looking all over the warehouse, and dodging the forklifts, for the coffin of their loved one, such is the overcrowding in cemeteries at this time. This is a great scene.

An Average Little Man has apparently been picked as one of the 100 most important Italian films by the Italian Ministry of Culture. That is quite an honor. Nevertheless, I must report the film did not hold my interest, whether it was on account of my expectations, my mood, or the film's slow pace.