Strictly average movie

Perfectly adorable

Load of rubbish!!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Oh boy, this was made almost forty years ago and - what a surprise! - we are basically still stuck in the same traffic jam. Only today nobody bothers anymore with the whole anti-consumerism shtick, mainly, I suspect, because we have bought this lifestyle hook, line and sinker, ingesting it to a degree that it has now become our second nature. So, here's a lot to like and a lot to learn, social commentary not only on Italian but most of our contemporary Western societies. But be prepared, I am by no means a squeamish viewer, but there is this one scene where a strong, independent, likeable female character is gang raped by three devilishly handsome yuppie guys in the back of a baby food truck. All the while, four old guys armed to the teeth watch on as if the spectacle was put on display solely for their own amusement. I found this hard to swallow and putting a somewhat sour note on an otherwise provocative, critical but also thoughtful and clever movie. On the other hand, if you compare this movie to the utter politically correct drivel we are served nowadays in multiplexes everywhere, it feels almost like a breath of fresh air, despite the toxic fumes emanating from its mega congestion.

Due to some other's comments, I decided to rent "L'ingorgo", hoping to see a real Italian styled "black comedy", a reflex of the early '50s Cinema d'Autore that left us many jewels, mixed with '70s socio-political satire.Instead, I had to watch a boring, tedious and even violent piece, filled with excellent actors and actresses, that in the beginning was truly promising, but then became a long, exasperating show, with no specific purpose.Particularly shocking is the scene of a rape, committed by 3 guys, and witnessed by others who, instead of stopping it by shooting their firearms to the air, discussed if it was worth watching it or not. Well, by the way the film turned, it's a relief the authors didn't choose to make those witnesses participate in the multiple rape.I didn't understand what Marcello Mastroianni's character meant, or why some things happened without consequences (the rape, the sacking of a truck, some crazy drivers, discussions, etc.).It didn't seem a "written" movie, but a spaghetti incident of talents mixed up like the traffic jam itself, and left alone with some cameras and microphones open as they moved and talked.If that was the purpose of this film, then I didn't quite get it like that.

So few comments for the great Luigi Comencini!One of the best Italian directors in the heyday (sixties and seventies) of Italian cinema!"Ingorgo",like "lo scopone scientifico" ,is a modern fable.But whereas the former dealt with the power of money,the poor wops against the high and the mighty,the later involves the whole society,including the social worries.At first sight,it looks like an unspectacular disaster movie:the traffic jam acts reveals the deep malaise of the Italian (???) consumer society .The car,what a symbol!Long before Cronenberg("crash")and infinitely better than him,Comencini heralds the dead end of our era ,poisoned by selfishness,hypocrisy,wickedness and the God named car that man created...As Pollack a decade earlier had shown in "They shoot horses,don't they" an America going round in circles,Comencini shows here the end of the road.As in a disaster movie,there are a lot of subplots (no plot,no main character),but Comencini is too clever to follow the rules:except for Sordi and Mastroianni,the stars (Depardieu,Annie Girardot,Ugo Tognazzi,Miou Miou,et al) take a back seat to less familiar faces.A road movie,it is for sure.Everything happens on the road.And anything can happen.A desolate landscape,cars on the road,and along the wayside,wrecks of cars .And inside this apocalyptic world,the milk of human meanness,everyman for himself and God against us all!The movie reaches paroxysms of horror during a rape scene in a van during the night :the doors remains open:four bourgeois,in the car behind ,put on their headlights and relish with the girl's screams.(She might like that,one of the peeping toms says!They pay for such a show in town,another one replies)If there is a hope,as such is often the case in Comencini's world,it can be found in children's eyes.A little ray of light illuminates the darkness when a girl (sadly the one who will be assaulted)takes her guitar and sing a lovely tune for little boys and girls with cherubic faces.Another hope can be found in the reverend's words when he prays over the body of the man in the ambulance (stuck in the traffic jam too).Comencini's words indeed."Ingorgo" is an absolute pessimistic work.And the last pictures,displaying the populace ingurgitating jars of baby food comes as another symbol.Either man will be born again with a child's wisdom,or he will be doomed for eternity.Children are fathers to the man and so much more in Comencini's work:in "lo scopone scientifico" it's the daughter who's the most sensible;in "incompreso", a child suffers from the adults' indifference;in "cuore" the children who were carefully taught are sent to the war and lose all their illusions.Like most of Comencini 's works,it is a black comedy that cries to be seen.Comedy is a wrong word anyway when you verge constantly on human dumbness tragedy.

"Traffic Jam" is a grandiose black comedy which is a little bit of Fellini's "Roma", Godard's "Weekend, and Bunuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie." Along a Roman highway there is a monumental traffic jam that lasts 36 hours. We get to witness the dramas, personal and public, of a group of people in this pile-up of vehicles, an image no doubt to be taken as a microcosm of an aggressively cut-throat world. It is a movie that is in turn tongue-in-cheek, riotous, clever, and just plain funny. Extended cameo roles are provided by Alberto Sordi, Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Annie Girardot, and Angela Molina. It is a good example of "commedia all'italiana", a genre that combined rib-tickling humor with savage satire.