User reviews

I saw parts of the movie when i was a child, today i had the pleasure of having a second chance to see it. I grabbed the opportunity... I'm a person o likes cinema in general, maybe more independent, but keeping the attention on the products of the enterprise... The film is a pungent, powerful blow to the modern society... When it premiered it was also in this condition... But nowadays the film balances between the tragic and the comic gender, with a sensitive eye... Very funny... Extremely dramatic... The ironic look, that scola gives to the foundings of European civilization, the ability to survive, how in extreme conditions (poverty, famine, lack of hygienic conditions) the humans have the capability of preserving values has purity, humor, fantasy… And without being afraid in addressing the darkest side of man, the violent being, the amorality, putting aside the fear of shocking th audience… Etore manages a brilliant timing in managing the drama and the comedy… More would take place in this reflection but I don't want to risk sounding (even more…) pretentious…. One of my favorite movies... Até já... ps: I apologize for the quality of my written English...

This is an extraordinary film. A pitiless portrait of human race. Scola describes the life of poor and marginal people with no compassion, showing all their miseries and perfidies. In this sense, the film is very close to another masterpiece, Viridiana from Bunuel. Everything in this movie is so disconcerting (beginning with the slum which has a magnificent vista to St. Peter's Cathedral) that it also remembers me of David Lynch's works. Besides all that, the film is absolutely hilarious.

I would not call this a comedy. Maybe a tragicomedy. It is true, some scenes are funny. But that's not the point. The point is to give an hyper-realistic, painful portrait of extreme ignorance and poverty, and its consequences. These people cannot afford to be good, honest, or have any positive family feeling. Like prisoners in a Nazi camp, they are deprived of all their humanity. The only thing that keeps the family united is the shack they live in, and the idea of taking Giacinto's money. I want to stress the fact that the movie _is_ realistic. There _were_ shantytowns around Rome in the seventies. And the people _were_ like that. The constantly mocking and jocking attitude is a trait of the Roman popular culture. It does not mean they're happy and light-hearted. So beware, this movie won't just give you a good laugh. If you like it, check this out as well, I don't think you can buy it, but the Italian RAI TV showed it some time ago:

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0073339/

Just a great film! I think that "Ugly, Dirty an Bad" has more quality than many "Hollywood-made-to-win-Oscars" films. Let's forget by now the humor side of the film; the content brought to the viewer shows as those kind of people try to survive day by day in extreme poverty and illness. Much more than a film to make people laugh, it's a documentary and a "finger-in-wound" in nowadays issues. I hope people after see that movie just don't remember the funniest scenes, but also the human side of the whole story pictured in there. Remember, everywhere we go, even if all around seems to be nice and beauty, somewhere, if we look carefully, we can discover "dark spots"... Recently in an opinion article about another film, in the heading section we could read "[...] Mary, satiated of removing thorns from the rose flowers in local factory [...]" That's the point: there's no roses without thorns! And if you see a rose without them, it's because someone had remove it before...

The great Nino Manfredi stars in this side-splitting and brutal black comedy about a bacteria-like family of degenerates occupying the slums on the outskirts of Rome. Manfredi is the misanthropic and miserly aging patriarch who has a secret hoard of money he guards zealously. He despises his wife and cretinous children who try to rob his stash and try to kill him by poisoning his maccaroni. You really won't believe this marvelous quintessence of gross until you see it with your own eyes. It is "commedia all'italiana" in full force.

Nino Manfredi, only professional actor here, shines in this Ettore Scola movie as Giacinto Mazzarella, a former convict with a long series of crimes and a huge, quirky family. He's violent, vulgar, amoral; he lives surrounded by dirt, squalor and poverty. Yet, he's funny. This movie is too funny! Scola directs a group of actors headed by Manfredi, who shows off an irresistible accent, and by Maria Luisa Santella as Iside, Giacinto's mistress, a fat, sweet but silly woman with an "ancient name". But it isn't a carefree comedy: behind the quips and the jokes there's a grotesque depiction of a miserable reality not very far from San Pietro, the most important Catholic building in the world. Not a perfect film, but a very good one.

After all these years I still come back to this movie, enjoying a true art. Although it shows the so-called-life of the people from the bottom, it's still a beautiful portrait of the human race in its essence: we are truly ugly, dirty and evil inside, behind all those masks we wear. This is "human" deprived of all the "civilization". The movie itself is a masterpiece. All those shots, casting, directing, music, dialogs, scenes that make you cry and laugh and disgust you simultaneously, all led by the master Scola. One should not review any movie without previously watching this one. This is what any movie should be: a picture of life. Sometimes funny, but mostly loathsome. And we're all just animals inside, just give us a chance to show it. Highly recommended as "a must".

The eleventh feature film by Italian writer-director Ettore Scola, "Ugly, Dirty and Bad" (1976) is a rich, crazy and humorous portrait of life in poverty and social alienation in Rome for a family of four generations.

"Ugly, Dirty and Bad", the title alone gives you the perfect idea of what the film is all about, a film that is really disgusting but in a good Way, A Must Watch.

This tragicomic film revolves around a gigantic family who lives in a miserable home in the center of Rome. Four generations of the same family doing everything (absolutely everything) in the same confined, filthy and abject space, without seeming to matter minimally. Obviously not a normal family, everyone is a bit crazy, obscene and totally ignore the most basic notions of hygiene. Privacy? Forget it. Even sex has an audience. The patriarch is a disgusting man who have won a little fortune by losing an eye in job, and his major concern in life is the integrity of his little fortune, that he hides, even (and mainly) from his own family until the day he takes a street whore to live with him in the squalor...

This it's the kind of grotesque movie that was a bit trendy during the late seventies and early eighties. In this case, it's a comedy that shows the inhuman way these people live and behave, their fears and their obsessions. It's a film about the absence of humanity that sometimes lives side by side with our great cities, and which we prefer to ignore. Those people do not just live like animals in the trash. They are human garbage, of a society that is uglier and crueler than they are. There they were born, there they will live their lives until they die and their bones will mix with the trash where they have always lived. Even the children end up being the target of a perversion that turns them into trash. And all this comically shown.

Interesting, philosophical but sad as much as it is comic, is a film to see but mainly to think and to make think.

This is a great comedy! Extremely funny, warm and insightful. It is one of those movies you can look again and again. In general, I am a big fan of the Italian movies, especially from the period of 50s to early 80s. By the way, if you liked this movie you will almost certainly like the movies by Emir Kusturica.

I have seen this film twice and going I'm to watch it again tomorrow. Known as 'Down By Law' in the states where I first saw it in the early 80's , all I can think to say is I've never seen a funnier movie in my life. If you get the chance to see this one do it! It will have you rolling and give you a bellyache... no I'm not giving away the plot line just a teaser. The family in this film are fantastically portrayed and the setting is hilarious to say the least. From their heads to their footwear the casting was perfect. Don't let subtitles put you off it really is worth watching you wont regret it and I think you will want to watch it over and over whenever you need a good laugh play this film!

If you ask me what is the second best movie of all time , it's difficult to say. But if you ask me which is the best movie ever , there's no doubt. Brutti, sporchi , cattivi is the ultimate masterpiece. If you're not from Italian origin , you may not agree... it's funny , and yet profound and adult. What we have today ?

Spielberg ; Infantile .Lovable aliens. Capable of transform an android gigolo into a Disney character (Kubrick's AI) James Cameron: His movies are a collection of clichés. Super production hides the fact Quentin Tarantino : Comics filmed. Just Hype. Robert Zemeckis : For all audiences

Those who save the day : "Tim Burton , Scorcese ( Forget Hugo ),Polanski, Clint Eastwood. Not to mention those who passed . Kubrick, Nicholas Ray,Sam Peckinpah, and many others

Almost fifty years later, this hyper-realistic and ruthless portrait of the misery of the slums, the outskirts of the big cities, in the case of the Italian capital, remains alive and impressive, in its visceral rawness.

At the time, Scola, like Pasolini before him, sought, above all, to denounce this suburban misery, as a product of capitalist society and the inequalities it generated. But barely twelve years later, and even before the fall of the Soviet Union and the communist regimes dependent on it, Kusturica filmed the miserable flow of gypsies and other underprivileged people, from socialism, in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria or Romania, towards begging, prostitution and crime, in the Italian slums, in Time of the Gypsies.

Today, it seems clear that this wound, which lasted for most of the second half of the 20th century in Europe, was caused by the massive, internal and external, migration phenomena, that followed the Second World War.

At present, the problem mainly involves south/north migration, to Europe and the United States, which is being attenuated through state intervention, in the temporary accommodation and repatriation of many migrants, not avoiding, even so, dramatic situations, which remind us, sometimes, the misery of post-war Europe.

A social classic, always worth revisiting.

From someone who has seen it at least 10 times, A Punch in the Gut that will stick with you.

Anyone who considers it a comedy film has not understood anything.

IMHO An embarrassing journey into the depths of human pettiness, worthy of a horror film.

Definitely a masterpiece. Every smile it brings brings you to a lower level of sadness. Every time.

Cold, cynical, awkward. Perhaps the only film that after seeing it, makes me feel the need to take a shower to get rid of the feeling.

And I will continue to see him every time he comes on tv.

And it will continue to transmit discomfort.

And every detail you will notice will be like a splash of mud that you will feel you have to wash off.

Every time.

(1976) Ugly, Dirty and Bad/ Brutti, sporchi e cattivi (In Italian with English subtitles) PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA

Although, the movie doesn't have a plot, it does however, introduces us to a family living together in a boarded-like shack in one of the most poorest locations in Italy. It's located high on a hill, near a highway which can be labelled as your average dumping ground. The head of the household is Giacinto Mazzatella (Nino Manfredi) who appears to own this little shack along with his wife and older sons and their kids scrunched, sleeping together on whatever small spaces s/he could find. And each one of the members are throwing hissy fits with one another, especially the head of the household, who is the father. He throws the biggest fit of them all who sleeps with a loaded shotgun beside his bed getting all paranoid, about his bundle of money which he hides it on different locations, wherever he could find. His mother whose like the oldest member of this family does nothing but watch TV, whereas each morning everybody else leaves doing what hoodlums do, which is thieving and loitering. Much of the movie showcases the father with his one good eye grumbling about his no good kids, with the neighbors who clash at them. As we the viewers observe the family squabbles with one another, particularly against the father, it is still fascinating to see how each of them cope with another this long, for although their lifestyle is routine, it's still enough to keep our interests from sticking to them until the very end.

Italy -1970s. A miserable house built in the poor suburbs of the city. The whole family lives there, and the only one who has money is the father, jealous and weary guardian of his treasure. No values, no morality other than envy and greed. No lost love either -the father lives in the constant fear of being robbed by his own children, until he falls in love with a stranger and imposes her in the over-crowded house, in his wife's very bed. A terrible, cruel picture of the life of the poor, who are refused here the most basic human dignity. Uncomfortable and unfair, this movie cannot been watched without revolt against the one-sided film maker who just painted the dark side of a more subtle reality. What exactly has Ettore Scola tried to achieve with such manicheism???

The blackest of black comedies. The only movies that come close are perhaps The War of the Roses, or Tatie Danielle, or The Return of the Living Dead, or Man Bites Dog, or John Waters' trash trilogy, or early Peter Jackson. I laughed a lot the first time I watched this movie, and I knew I had to watch it again immediately so I could feel properly mortified at how awful this family is (dysfunctional doesn't even begin to describe it) and the things that they do to each other. Each time I watch it I alternate between laughing and being shocked. None of the actors are film regulars except for Nino Manfredi. The rest are local acting troupe members. I start laughing from the first audio while the opening credits roll (which is first water dripping, then snoring.)

Rape scenes are depicted as funny. The poor are described as idiotic savages who are just wandering around aimlessly. Everything is presented as funny while there is nothing funny about what is presented on the screen: poor people reduced to kill each other for money, women raped by men who are all sexual predators, children who have to grow in this toxic environment, ... A big pile of rape culture with a classist point of view. These kind of films make me feel like vomiting. This is absolute garbage.