Watch Everybody Go Home! For Free

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

After finding the 2014 War film Fury to be rather disappointing,I decided to not set foot on the battle field for a while,but found my plans to quickly change,when I noticed that a DVD seller had tracked down a War film which I had seen be highly praised by fellow IMDbers,which led to me once again getting ready to enter a war zone.The plot-Italy-1943:Listening to the radio,a small army unit led by Lt. Alberto Innocenzi finds out that Italy has decided to leave the Axis behind,and has just signed an armistice with the Allies.Before getting a chance to make sense of what has taken place,German troops invade Innocenzi's base.Getting covered with gunfire from their former Axis partner,Innocenzi and his men escape from the base.Finding themselves without any order of command,Innocenzi and his former troop each decide to try and make the long journey home,but soon discover that war has become the new home for them and the country.View on the film:Placing Innocenzi and his men in the cross-hairs of Italy's sudden armistice,the screenplay by co-writer/(along with..deep breath! Agenore Incrocci/ Furio Scarpelli & Marcello Fondato)director Luigi Comencini battles with the crossing of a tense War Drama with Comedy.Staying on the edge that the infamous (and never seen!) Jerry Lewis movie The Day the Clown Cried fell off,the writers take a very smart,mature approach to the comedic elements,with the very funny comedy moments coming from Innocenzi and his former troop finding themselves free from taking any orders,but not from the unfolding horror of War that they find themselves in,which are loosely based on the WWII events that took place in Italy in 1943.As they all try to return home,the writers brilliantly increase the dramatic tension of the title at a gradual pace,with Innocenzi finding out that his real family is his soldiers,as the worn-down Innocenzi is told by family members that he must continue to back the fascist forces.Opening with German troops overrunning an army base, Comencini and cinematographer Carlo Carlini give the action scenes a thrilling bite with excellent,vast wide shots which put the viewer right in the midst of the action,and bullets fly pass Innocenzi makes his journey home.Keeping the tension building off the battlefield,Comencini uses closely-held tracking shots to reveal the close friendship between Innocenzi and his former troop.Stopping fellow Comedy actor Nino Manfredi from getting a role, (which led to him being the only Comedy actor in the film) Alberto Sordi gives a marvellous performance as Innocenzi,with Sordi showing Innocenzi become increasingly disconnected to the local support for the war,as Sordi makes Innocenzi hard stone face break,due to developing a moral compass for the safe return home of his men.Following Innocenzi every step of the way, Serge Reggiani gives a fantastic performance as Geniere Assunto Ceccarelli,thanks to Reggiani hitting the Comedy with a delightful light touch,which explodes as Reggiani smoothly moves Ceccarelli over being desperate about getting other people safely home from the war.

September 8th, 1943: Badoglio, head of the Italian government after the downfall of Mussolini, declares an armistice towards the Allied forces. Thousands of soldiers are left without any order, while king Vittorio Emanuele III packs and runs. In a nation ravaged by war and still occupied by the former German allies, now it's every man for himself.In the early Sixties, Italian cinema was desperately trying to come to terms with the nation's recent, painful mistakes. Tutti a Casa features a selfish, roguish protagonist ultimately finding his moral compass and taking a stand - achieving not victory, but dignity. The same happens in La Grande Guerra, Il Generale Della Rovere, I Due Colonnelli, I Due Nemici, in a valiant - if overly optimistic - attempt to wash the national dirty linen in public.Tutti a Casa is the best of these movies. Monicelli captures with a deft hand and his trademark bittersweet style the adventures of a group of soldiers led by their officer (Alberto Sordi) right after Sep. 8th.Meanwhile, in the same years a new tone emerged in Italian comedies like Il Sorpasso, Divorzio all'Italiana and Una Vita Difficile: in spite of a surprising economic rebirth, a deep-rooted sense of mistrust and disappointment returns, as reaction morphs once again into stagnation. The circle closes with C'Eravamo Tanto Amati, pretty much sealing off any illusion.8/10

This is possibly Comencini's finest work (which I watched in tribute to his recent passing), one of several contemporaneous Italian war-themed films - Mario Monicelli's LA GRANDE GUERRA (1959), Gillo Pontecorvo's KAPO' (1959), Roberto Rossellini's IL GENERALE DELLA ROVERE (1959) and ERA NOTTE A ROMA (1960), Florestano Vancini's LA LUNGA NOTTE DEL '43 (1960), Vittorio De Sica's LA CIOCIARA (1961), Luciano Salce's IL FEDERALE (1961), Nanni Loy's LE QUATTRO GIORNATE DI NAPOLI (1962), etc. Still, despite being awarded the David Di Donatello for best film (and other international prizes), it's not very well-known outside Italy!The international cast assembled for the film is comprised of Italians (Alberto Sordi, Nino Castelnuovo, Edoardo De Filippo, Carla Gravina), French (Serge Reggiani) and Americans (Martin Balsam, Alex Nicol); Nino Manfredi was originally intended for the role eventually played by Reggiani - but Sordi apparently objected to the idea of having two comic stars in the film! Still, in spite of Sordi's reputation, it's not an out-and-out comedy but rather a tragi-comedy about the chaos which pervaded Italy in the final days of WWII - with most of the soldiers eager to go back home by every possible means, regardless of the risk of their being arrested for desertion! The scene in which Sordi's father (celebrated playwright De Filippo) contrives to have his war-weary son join the resurging Fascist Army as soon as he arrives home is a moving depiction of the elders' illusion of their country's glory and, at the same time, the children's disenchantment with their own parents. Despite their inherent self-preservation and egotism (exemplified by Sordi's escapade with a lusty merchant), the soldiers are bound together by solidarity - and, eventually joining the partisans, he gets to indulge in some machine-gun action at the very end.A wonderful dramatic sequence involves Jewish Gravina being hounded by the Germans: with the help of Sordi and his company, she flees their pursuit on various means of transportation - but this actually leads to Castelnuovo's demise. Similarly poignant is the night-time conversation between U.S. refugee Nicol and Sordi at Balsam's house - which is interrupted by the arrival of the Fascists, who promptly arrest the two American actors (though Balsam is actually playing an Italian, as is Reggiani).The film's comic highlight, then, sees the boys pilfering Reggiani's precious food parcel while he's asleep and substituting it with rocks (an incident which has a tragic outcome later on). Another episode which mixes farce with suspense is the one where Sordi and other escaping prisoners take refuge inside a church (the star hides in a confessional and, mistaken for the parish priest by an old lady, she starts relating her sins to him!).Unfortunately, the print I watched of this gem was rather soft and hazy - and I'm wondering what the quality of the bare-bones Italian DVD is like...

A historical premises.... After the armistice of the 8 th September 1943, Italys defeated army literally collapsed.Italy effectively had switched sides in the world war alliances,allied with USA against Nazi Germany,leaving many Italian army units in the lurch....and the Nazi German army invasion a few weeks later! Some units joined the the Anglo-Americans and valiantly fought with them,a few more joined the Fachist militias of the Salò regime in Northern Italy sustained by Nazi troops which together perpetuated massacres of civilians. However a large number of Italian army units,just melted like snow in a sunny spring day,disappearing or rather deserting in mass,prefering like the title of the film "..to return home". The films spirit is basically about a strong desire of war weary soldiers to return back home to their families. Something which apparently would seem an easy task....but not in this film!!This film retaining a deep tragic undertone has also some hilarious scenes of the more tragi-comical style,which was typical of the post neo-realistic film scripts of Italian cinema in the 1950's and 1960's,(The best period of Italian cinema).An absolute "must see film" for Italo-philes and fans of Italian cinema.Strangely enough,this film has never been much appreciated in Italy,and it is hard to find as video-cassette both for renting or buying.My vote 9.