I don't know if many of you are aware of this great Italian director, but, yesterday, I saw him in the flesh at the French Cinémathèque. He came from Italy for this complete retrospective of his work. He is now 93 and looks a good deal younger. Monicelli is one of the creator of the Italian comedy with the comical masterpiece I soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958) available from Criterion. This film was Claudia Cardinale's first ever picture. She was also present yesterday evening, still looking great at 70.
Monicelli spoke in perfect French like all the Italians present yesterday evening, very moved by the packed full room. 
Then we saw a brilliant picture, rather dark and disturbing in some aspect: Un borghese piccolo, piccolo (A very little man, 1977).
Giovanni Vivaldi (Alberto Sordi, in one of his best roles) is a small civil servant working in a ministry in Rome. His pride and joy is his son Mario. He wants his slightly dumb son to become an accountant within the same ministry. He goes to enormous length, pulling strings with his boss and even joining the Free Masons! Alas, when he thought he had managed, his sons is killed before his eyes by some bank robbers by mistake. His world collapses, his wife (brilliantly played by Shelley Winters) gets a stroke and he decides to avenge his son's death....
The film started really like an Italian comedy with its usual quirky look at Italian bureaucracy (hilarious office full of papers where men disappear behind walls of files!). But the change of tone was extremely sudden. There weren't any transition. Sordi becomes a changed man whose life purpose has gone, except for revenge, unleashing his latent violence.
I'll certainly go again to see more Monicelli pictures.