In Risi's rarely screened comedy of commerce, marriage, and murder, Alberto Sordi exercises his talent for emphatic incompetence as Alberto Nardi, a cash-strapped Italian industrialist whose elegant wife, Elvira (Franca Valeri), holds him in well-justified and oft-expressed contempt. When the wealthy Elvira is believed dead in a train accident, Alberto thinks all his troubles are over-but Elvira turns up at her own funeral, and Alberto's feigned grief turns pathetically real. Valeri matches Sordi's artful exaggeration with sardonic, cool control in what is not just a battle of the sexes but a battle of cultures, between Elvira's Milanese sophistication and Alberto's coarser southern style. (Speaking of cool, the score by Armando Trovaioli features a performance by Chet Baker.)