Era Lui!...Si! Si! (1951)
Directed by Vittorio Metz
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Synopsis by Hal Erickson
The English-language title of this wacky comedy is It Was Him...Yes! Yes! "Him" Walter Milani, is played by Walter Chiari, a singular comic actor who was touted by American critics as a "new" star, even though he'd been successfully plugging away in European films since 1947. Chiari plays a meek-and-mild clerk in a department store who discovers that his boss (Carlo Campanini) is mortally afraid of him. It seems that the boss is plagued by nightmares, in which Malani appears as a "villain" who doles out ridicule and humiliation. With the help of a psychiatrist, the boss comes to grips with his inner fears, while the hapless Milani reacts in confusion as all sorts of favors and kindnesses are heaped upon him. The dream sequences are cleverly rendered send-ups of every Freudian symbol in the book.
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Keywords
boss [employer], clerk, humiliation, labor-relations, mental-illness, psychiatry