Il domestico

Lando Buzzanca as butler for certain hours

When it comes to a film from the 1970s with Lando Buzzanca in the lead role, you are of course dealing with an Italian COMMEDIA SEXY in which things are sometimes very raunchy. This film by Luigi Filippo D'Amico also offers a satirical overview of contemporary Italian history that is definitely worth seeing. The makers of the Venice Film Festival also recognized this when they included this film in the program in 2010 as part of a retrospective of Italian film comedies.

Rosario Cabaduni (Lando Buzzanca), called Sasa, actually only wants one thing in life: to be a proper and conscientious servant. During the final turmoil of the World War, he ends up with a Nazi general (Peplum star Gordon Mitchell) before returning to Italy to work with a director (Luciano Salce as a Dino De Laurentiis blend) and his exalted actress wife (gorgeous : Femi Benussi as a wonderful parody of Silvana Mangano!) to go into service. However, the sexually hungry women who demand his services not only at the table but also in bed always get in the way of the pretty Sasa. So it happens that the good guy has to change positions repeatedly. However, the submissive jack-of-all-trades cannot shake off his sexual attraction. So he has to accompany a noble employer in a wheelchair to the brothel, where he meets the pretty Rita (Martine Brochard). The next employers (Silvia Monti and Renzo Marignani) are secretly interested in their own gender as part of the sexual revolution...The best thing to try is to study! Of course, this leads to all sorts of complications, which escalate especially when the omnipotent Sasa wants to have fun with a communist-minded saleswoman (Erika Blanc). The next stop is tough: in the household of the super-rich building contractor (Arnoldo Foa) he meets the former prostitute Rita as his wife. To make matters worse, the love-hungry lady also has a pubescent daughter (Leonora Fani), whose extreme silver eyes can only be cured by Sasa's excessive stamina. But the building contractor also cast a benevolent eye on his perfectly formed butler. He uses it to bring various bribes to the ruling parties. Just like it was usual in Italy! Only in Italy? We don't want to delve deeper into this, as the story takes us to another station where Sasa is able to bring in his diverse talents...

This humorous sex comedy is one of the better performances by Lando Buzzanca, alongside THE EROTICIST / DER LANGE SCHWARZE MIT DEM SILBERBLICK by Lucio Fulci, but he always does a relatively good job. The beautiful actresses can also show off their skills here and are not just cast as erotic accessories (as is often the case).

Of course, a film of this kind is not for everyone, but you will definitely be entertained.

You can actually tell a lot about the quality of 60's and 70's Italian comedies from their lead male actors. The really low-brow ones that were basically one big fart joke usually featured male comics like Alvaro Vitali and/or Lino Banfi, while the most high-brow, sophisticated ones (which were often not particularly funny) featured actors like Marcello Mastroanni, Ugo Tognazzi, or Vittorio Gassman. Somewhere between these two extremes are the comedies of Lando Buzzanca that were somewhat sophisticated, but still very funny and unpretentious. They are also highly satirical, particularly the films Buzzanca made with Lucio Fulci, and this one.

In this film Buzzanca plays a man whose only real desire in life is to be the perfect, most loyal domestic servant. He starts out in the army at the end of World War II briefly working for a powerful field marshal he never actually meets. Then he is captured by--and serves as a butler for-- both the Nazis and the Americans. In post-war Itay he works for a neo-realist director and his voluptuous actress wife (Femi Benussi doing Silvana Mangano) and briefly embarks on a misguided career as a neo-realist "actor". Then he works for wheel-chair confined elderly clergyman, who insists he take him on weekly constitutionals--right down to the local brothel. There Buzzanca falls for a sympathetic prostitute (Martine Brochard), but things end badly. Next he works for a swinging bisexual couple and the movie briefly turns into a bedroom farce as each of the couple brings home a same-sex partner while Buzzanca himself is trying to bed a sexy communist shopgirl (Erika Blanc). Finally, he finds work with a corrupt industrialist and ends up becoming a bag-man in his corrupt dealings. By coincidence, the industrialist is married to his former prostitute/lover (Brochard). Buzzanca gets back together with her and also dutifully "cures" the couple's cross-eyed, nymphomaniacal, virgin daughter (Leanora Fani), at least of being cross-eyed and a virgin.

Obviously,there's some rich satire here of various targets including the military, the clergy, neo-realists, communists, 60's swingers, corrupt industrialists, cross-eyed nympho virgins, etc. This kind of like Voltaire's "Candide" in that it literally savages EVERYONE, not least of all its own misguided protagonist. It's not quite as laugh-out-loud funny as some of the stuff Buzzanca did with Fulci like "The Eroticist". And it's not quite the hot sex romp you'd expect with Brochard AND Benussi AND Blanc AND Fani in the cast. Still, these four actresses were all in plenty of films in the 70's where they were little more than nice pieces of tail, so it's nice to see them stretch themselves a little in a somewhat more classy movie. As for Buzzanca, he is great as always. This doesn't seem like the kind of film that will ever see a decent English-language DVD release (or even an Italian one), but it's definitely a worthwhile film if you want to try to seek it out.