The fantastic is all-too-real in this Kafkaesque tale of a provincial lad (Enzo Jannacci) who comes to Rome determined to obtain an audience with the Pope. Refusing to divulge his message--only claiming to have personal matters of the utmost importance to discuss with the Pontiff--he arouses a human barrier of guards, friars, police, prelates and cardinals. A fashionable Roman call girl (Claudia Cardinale) is even hired to divert the man from his vigil at the Vatican gate. But neither jail nor asylum can dissuade him; he will meet his Maker before giving up his quest for a "dialogue." With Ugo Tognazzi as a police inspector and Vittorio Gassman as a Vatican nobleman nostalgic for the good old days of Il Duce, this is grotesque and also affecting comedy in the Marco Ferreri/Rafael Azcona (La Donna Scimmia) tradition. Lino Micciche writes in International Film Guide: "It is really a first class film, in which the peculiar and unmistakable argument matches the human and inherently poetic values of Ferreri's insight into solitude and suffering. Paradoxically, it seems to have a 'Christian' ideology, despite the protests it has excited in certain Catholic quarters. No one believes in God more than those who accuse Him of being deaf to man's entreaties."