Film

Why? (1971)

Director: Nanni Loy

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A film that attracted a certain amount of attention as an indictment of the hopelessly corrupt and inhuman Italian penal system. Sordi plays an expatriate engineer returning to Italy on holiday with his Swedish wife and kids. He is promptly arrested for no apparent reason, shipped from jail to jail, jumps through absurd legal hoops, and worries himself into an asylum for the criminally insane before even getting near a trial. The film suffers from looking like an American light comedy, and Sordi's performance diverts events away from an excursion into Kafka territory. It occasionally manages to rise above itself: a homosexual near-rape; a sharp portrayal of a prison governor; the boredom and discomfort of long train journeys; the indignity of being watched while trying to shit. But for the most part it plays safe.

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