Todos a casa

I saw this film over 50 years ago and I have never forgotten it. It was a minor masterpiece in the full bloom of Italian cinema by independents among others Pietro Germi. 'Tutti a casa' is a comedy about four demobbed cowardly soldiers happy to get out of the war to get home to Naples. While I laughed at the self mockery of the main actors over their cowardice suddenly in the middle of a belly laugh an arresting scene occurs on a train when German soldiers take off a Jewish girl they had been befriending and shoot her off screen.Tragedy in the middle of comedy???? Hard to believe but the touch of genius by the producers of this stunning film got away with it. Our cowardly protagonists get home to Naples just at the same time that the Germans turn on the napolitani for their four day stand off and we see them picking up a gun at the end of a movie. all they ever wanted as delightfully cowardly Napoltani was to go home make love and eat spaghetti. Life and death superbly juggled in a film which opened a deep philosophical synergy in me by an unknown genius