A cult, cruel and wild Italian comedy!

New HD restoration

A slum in Rome in the 1960s. Giacinto reigns as a tyrant over his family: his wife, ten children, spouses, lovers and grandmother, all housed under the same roof, in a filthy hovel. Everyone accepts his authority and his bad temper, because the cantankerous patriarch has a hoard of one million lire – received as compensation after losing an eye – which everyone hopes to steal from him. While Giacinto spends his days getting drunk or abusing the women around him, while the daughter roams the streets of Rome, while the son dresses up as a woman, while the grandmother learns English on TV, while the daughter-in-law is cheating on her husband with his brother, that the grandson hunts the dead rats, the assassination of Giacinto is secretly being prepared...

An acid and distorted portrait of the Roman underclass of the 1960s, rotten by the money relations that govern all of Italian society, Horrible, dirty and wicked is a curious mixture of naturalism and dark humour. Initially designed to be a documentary on the bogate , these insanitary shacks of Rome which housed more than 800,000 inhabitants in the 1960s, the film takes up, by making them burlesque and magnifying them, elements derived from neo- post-war Italian realism. Scola did not film in the real slums of the Italian capital, but he reconstructed them near the dome of Saint Peter, thus blaming the collusion of Roman clericalism and the political right.

In the midst of a remarkable cast mixing professionals and amateurs, Nino Manfredi is unforgettable as a despotic patriarch. Very controversial when it was released, deemed "decadent" by some critics because of its politically incorrect character, Affreux, dirty et wicked is now considered one of the great classics of Italian black comedy. Like Ferreri's La Grande bouffe , it is one of Italy's most critical, disturbing and powerful productions.

“From Paris, I would paint a portrait that was undoubtedly oleographic, beautiful, full of admiration, but without hatred. For Rome, there is also hatred; I think you also need this feeling to make a good portrait. » Ettore Scola

AWESOME, DIRTY AND WICKED
(1976 – Colors – 115 mins)
new HD restoration

SUPPLEMENTS *

. TRAILER

* in HD on the Blu-ray version

Released October 8, 2014 (Blu-ray)
Released January 19, 2011 (DVD)