Nanni Moretti began his career directing Super-8 films and stresses that he never attended a film school. In 1976, he made his first 35mm film, Io Sono Un Autarchico, which he scripted and starred in. Moretti continues that tradition with The Mass Is Over. Here, he plays Don Giulio, a convert to the priesthood who was once part of the radical '60s. Assigned to a new parish in his old Roman neighborhood, he returns only to go through a tragi-comic roll-call of old friends: an ex-jazz pianist, Cesare wants to be a priest, Andrea is behind bars for terrorist offences, Gianni runs a second-hand bookshop filled with leftist tomes, and Saverio has locked himself away in a run-down house. Don Giulio, in his dated soutane, tries desperately to offer his pastoral services with sympathy and understanding, but he is rejected by all he encounters. The humor of The Mass Is Over is located in Don Giulio's dogged innocence, in his blundering with outmoded ideals that are only suitable for some windy parish in the mountains. Variety reported: "Moretti's is a painfully self-conscious brand of comedy, bent on avoiding easy gags, punchlines, and cliches at all costs. When a monologue veers into the realm of the conventional, it is deliberately drowned out by music. The secret of the picture's success is its total impatience with all the bunk and baloney of everyday life." An inventive comedy, The Mass Is Over casts its irreverent eye on a most sacred subject.