"Difficult Life" (in the Soviet box office was called "Journalist from Rome") / Una vita difficile, 1961. The main character of the film Silvio Magnozzi (Alberto Sordi) is a medium-handed journalist, during the war he was in the partisans after the unit in which he served was disbanded, once he falls into one village, and there he is in the hands of the Germans, he was already going to be shot, but he was saved by the daughter of the hostess of the hotel Elena (Lea Massari), hitting the German on the head with a heavy cast iron. After that, she took Silvio to her grandfather’s mill, where he was only going to spend the night, but stayed for several months, having an affair with Elena. However, as soon as the partisans appeared, he left with them again, and then returned to Rome, where he was from and where he worked in a small newspaper of a socialist orientation, kind of forgetting about Helena. One day a couple of years later, he accidentally finds himself back in the country where he met Elena, and calls her on a date, she comes, despite the fact that she was actually going to get married. And he leads her off the path again, and she goes with him to Rome. Then we observe their fate and relationships. Possessing not very much intelligence, but persisting in his convictions, he can not get anywhere, he gets a penny in the newspaper, his novel “Difficult Life” is not taken anywhere because of low artistic merit, and because of the way and what he writes, fear censorship and the threat of lawsuits, and when one day he is given the opportunity to grab a big jackpot, he refuses it for moral reasons. He does many more things, while destroying his family life and then trying to glue it back together again, then neglects his principles and takes up humiliating work for him, achieves some material well-being, but in the end he did not suffer after another humiliating incident, gives the owner a face and leaves with his wife. What happens next, we will never know. The film is shot in the genre of Italian comedy, sometimes not very funny, sometimes rude, places with some exaggerations, including this is seen in the game of Alberto Sordi, who, of course, in this film almost solo, showing us all his famous techniques. Sometimes you sympathize with the hero (infrequently, I must say), sometimes he is sorry, sometimes he causes dislike, that is, he is no ideal hero, but he is still a living person. It's not a bad movie, I liked it.
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