War Is Heh-Heh-Hell

Everybody Go Home is an Italian comedy that says war is heh-heh-hell.

The story begins in September 1943, one of the less humorous months in Italian history. On Sept. 3, the Allies cross from Sicily; on Sept. 8, the Badoglio government surrenders; on Sept. 10, the Germans start to take over; on Sept. 12, Mussolini escapes and sets up as a German puppet. Like most of his countrymen Lieut. Alberto Innocenzi (Alberto Sordi) gets dizzy on the seesaw of events.

"Fight!" cries Mussolini. "Surrender!' says Badoglio. The lieutenant wants to do his duty, but what is his duty? Which is his lawful commander-in-chief ? Who are his enemies--the Allies, who are not shooting at him, or the Germans, who are? Unable to decide, the lieutenant and his men decide to go home, and as they go the camera follows them through painful alternations of laughter and slaughter.

One minute, not exactly kicking and screaming, the lieutenant is hauled off to the hay by a muscular milkmaid (Didi Perego); the next he is watching a German tommy gun chop down a refugee.

One minute, with smoldering nostrils, he confesses an unpatriotic passion for "Geengeair Rrrogeairs"; the next he sees a band of Fascist bullyboys drag a good man off to die. In the end he gets home to find that he has no home, that the war is not over until tyranny is dead.

Sordi at 42 is a clever straightface comic rather like Peter Sellers served with oil and vinegar. But he cannot elude a tricky problem the picture poses : how to put Mars in motley without suggesting that war is fun? Director Luigi Comencini conceives an interesting solution: play humor against horror, like flint against steel, and hope that sparks will fly. Now and then they do, but usually they don't; and they don't because the humor is too mild, too healthy, too Italian. Director Comencini might as well be striking flint against ravioli.

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