The Great War

“The great battle spectacle of our time!”

Two men in 1916 Italy do everything they can think of to stay out of the army, and the army calls them up anyway. Oreste Jacovacci (Alberto Sordi) and Giovanni Busacca (Vittorio Gassman) are shirkers by instinct, and Mario Monicelli plays their dodging as comedy while the trenches are never made to look any less grim. The film ends on the two of them in uniform, still bickering, the war all around.