The Marquis of Grillo

Onofrio del Grillo (Alberto Sordi) is a Roman marquis with too much money, a stuffy family, and a standing habit of making fools of everyone around him. His targets include the nobles at his own table, the poor in the streets, the French occupiers, and Pope Pius VII (Paolo Stoppa). Mario Monicelli stages early nineteenth-century Rome as a loud theater of costumes and palazzos, and Sordi runs through it grinning.