Bottom Feeders

The Italian film poster for ALL SCREWED UP (1974), directed by Lina Wertmuller

Gigi and Carletto are two naïve country bumpkins who, like many others from rural Italy and southern regions like Sicily, have come to the northern city of Milan to seek their fortunes. They soon fall in with other recent arrivals to the city seeking work and eventually set up a communal living situation in an abandoned apartment with others. Both men have big dreams and expectations but the reality is quite different from what they imagined and they fall prey to the city’s corrupting influences. It is a familiar scenario that you have probably seen in numerous other movies but director Lina Wertmuller gives it her own unique spin in Tutto a posto e niente in ordine (English title: All Screwed Up, 1974), an exuberant, gleefully crude satire that uses broad comedy and eccentric characters to magnify the myriad problems of Italy during the early 70s. This is her idiosyncratic contribution to Commedia all’italiana, a genre of comedic social commentary first created by Mario Monicelli and Pietro Germi in the late fifties/early sixties with such films as Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) and Divorce Italian Style (1961), satires where serious themes like poverty, unemployment, marital woes and economic hardships are treated in a lighthearted style.

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