Monica Vitti was the reigning queen of angst, Italian style in the Antonioni universe, but in this series she shows us the comic side that is equally well known to Italian filmgoers. Amore Mio Aiutami, the first of her films with Alberto Sordi (who also directed), is a bittersweet domestic comedy that sets about debunking the stereotypes of the faithless husband/long-suffering wife. Giovanni Macchiavelli (Sordi) is the thoroughly modern husband who espouses an open marriage to his spouse (Vitti) and then is devastated when she takes him at his word, proving herself even more Macchiavellian than he. Nothing comes together for this mutually hypocritical duo, in fact the whole thing falls apart on a yacht, amid crocodile tears, in the blue sea of August. But embedded in the hilarity is a melancholy study of a man's unrequited love for his own wife. Sordi, veteran of Italy's great comedies (Fellini's The White Sheik and I Vitelloni, Lattuada's Mafioso and Monicelli's La Grande Guerra are only a few of those included in this series) here directs the action with a natural's touch for the comic gesture and the absurd moment.