Italian director Lina Wertmüller was a flash in the pan, but this 1974 film was probably her brightest flash, a comedy about a working=class bumbler (Giancarlo Giannini) whose love life runs afoul of politics. The film never moves far from the conventions of Italian sex farces—that is, it’s a comedy of embarrassment and frustration—but the flip Marxism adds a little flavor. Wertmüller approaches the wrenching tastelessness of Billy Wilder without following through to Wilder’s redemptive purgation. With Mariangela Melato; remade as the Richard Pryor comedy Which Way Is Up? In Italian with subtitles.