The male of the species, represented by Sordi, Tognazzi, Gassman and Co., came off none too well in nine very funny episodes ranging from utterly black satires of human cruelty to slapstick relief. The three sketches with Sordi variously find our hero as a supposedly devoted son who delivers up his aged mother to an uncertain destiny on a Sunday afternoon; a good samaritan from the Rolls Royce crowd who finds himself saddled with a hit-and-run victim and who almost talks the man to death; and, in an homage to a form of show business to which Italian comedy owes much, a variety theater comedian. In the image of the garrulous Sordi delivering a graveside eulogy for a famous comedian that incorporates all the dead fellow's best jokes, Viva Italia, made late in the game, delightfully turns the mirror back on itself: Comedy is dead; long live comedy.