Roman clerk Alberto (Alberto Sordi) and his daughter Titti (Christine Kaufmann) spend a week's vacation at the ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo, fee of charge, because the girl has won the trip in a radio contest. During the course of the week the ebullient and hopelessly gauche father is out of his element among the high-society types. He loses control of himself, courts the elegant Contessa Paola (Eleonora Rossi-Drago) who treats him as another amusing escapade to tell friends about. He spends scads of money he doesn't have so that by the end of the trip he has to hock the family car he and his daughter had arrived in (a cheap Fiat '600) and return home by train. Whenever gifted comic Sordi is on screen, the movie jumps to life; whenever he is not, it is often tedium in the snow. There is another exception in the character of hotel-concierge Maurizio, played by the esteemed Vittorio De Sica. In an effort to supplement his meager income, he is not above pandering to all the guests whims, (like the loaning of a private chalet for an amorous trysts) at the same time he is tipping off the paparazzi eager to catch vacationing bluebloods in flagrante delicto.until it all suddenly backfires on him when he finds that his own beloved daughter is about to be compromised. The cast is excellent. Besides Sordi and De Sica, we have Michele Morgan, Renato Salvatori, and the very good Vera Silenti as De Sica's daughter. Veteran director Camillo Mastrocinque helms routinely. The Technirama/Technicolor shots of the Dolomites are pleasing.
