In Sicily, the mine worker Carmelo "Mimí" Mardocheo (Giancarlo Giannini) votes in the Communist Party candidate instead of in the Mafia's one believing that the suffrage is secret. After the elections, he loses his job and cannot find any other job in his village that is controlled by the mobster Don Calogero (Turi Ferro). He leaves his wife Rosalia (Agostina Belli) with his family and travels to Turin expecting to find a job.He finds an illegal position in the civil construction that is also explored by the Mafia and when a coworker dies in an accident, he finds that the mobsters have dumped his body on the road. However, he does not report the crime to the police and lies to the mobster Salvatore Tricarico (Turi Ferro) telling that he belongs to the family of a powerful mobster. Mimi gets a metallurgic position and joins the Communist Party. Then he fall in love with the virgin Trotskyite street vendor Fiorella Meneghini (Mariangela Melato) and they have a boy.When Mimi witness the mobster Vico Tricarico (Turi Ferro) executing several men in a hotel, he survives but he does not report to the police. Mimi is transferred to Catania in a supervisory position against his will. He brings Fiore and their son to Sicily, but he is still married with Rosalia but he claims that he is ill and does not have sex with her. When Mimi learns that Rosalia is pregnant, he finds that he is a cuckold and plots a scheme to seduce and knock up Amalia Finocchiaro (Elena Fiore), who is the wife of Rosalia's lover. But his revenge does not work as planned."Mimì metallurgico ferito nell'onore" is a bitter satire by Lina Wertmüller about a naive and ignorant Sicilian worker that entwines his honor with class warfare, politics and mafia in his miserable life with tragicomic consequences. I saw this movie in the 70's or 80's and today I have just watched the Brazilian DVD that is unfortunately edited to 108 minutes running time. I am a fan of the Italian director Lina Wertmüller and I like this unfunny satire about honor, moral and culture that is dated in the present days but it is impossible to laugh with the ignorance of Mimi and most of his countrymen. This weird movie may be lost between comedy and drama but for me it is an original and cult view of Italy in the early 70's. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "Mimi, O Metalúrgico" ("Mimi, The Metallurgic")

As a woman director in the early seventies, in a series of films Lina Wertmuller took on the issues related to gender and sexual revolutions, feminism and entrenched politics and economics. This work is one of them.As is true of this part of her oeuvre, the film works on many levels. The director is never satisfied with merely going after the easy laughs. Any viewer looking for social commentary, both in the main story-telling and the subtext will come away satisfied.This is a very "Italian" and "European" movie, in the sense that it captures the spirit of the times: both of the Italian North/South cultural wars/divide and of a particular European concern with the strength of "left" political and artistic movements and explorations of alternative, non-materialistic life-styles.All of this is shown as experienced by Mimi, a southern Italian everyman, buffeted by fate. In this role, Giancarlo Giannini once again shows his mastery of the acting craft. As is true for all foreign films, my advice is that if you don't know the language of the original, always view the subtitled version, so as not to miss the subtleties of the individual performances.I won't give away any of the plot. Just want to note that (as an architect, not a formally- trained film-maker) I can still appreciate the choices made by the director and cinematographer in telling the story. This is true for a thousand details. In the case of this film, the inspired choice of the camera lens ("fish-eye") for the scene between Giannini and Elena Fiore toward the end of the movie, adds immeasurably to its effectiveness. See for yourself and ROTFL.

Giancarlo Giannini plays a simple Southern Italian worker who unwisely thinks his local elections aren't 100% rigged by the local mob. Assuming it's a truly secret ballot, he disobeys the mobs instructions and votes for a local Communist instead. Well, he nearly gets himself killed in the meantime and is forced to run to Turin in the north. There, quite by accident, he runs afoul of the mob AGAIN and is nearly killed. In fact, this happens a lot in the film and the generally apolitical Giannini tries to play BOTH sides to his own benefit. In addition, he begins sleeping with several different women--once again hoping he can somehow balance it all and keep from getting killed. Despite all the many, many dangers, Giannini is somehow a survivor and the film has many cute little twists and turns.I can tell that this satire was meant to be very funny, but I just didn't find myself laughing. While it is a good film, it's certainly not among the more memorable Italian films I have ever seen. It's slightly better than a time-passer, but that's really about all. I think the biggest reason for this isn't due to the humor but more to the fact that Giannini's character is a real selfish jerk. Had he been more sympathetic, I really think the film would have been more memorable. However, considering this film won many awards and was pretty well respected in its day, it is quite possible I am just an idiot. See it for yourself, but just be surprised if you, too, don't find the film all that interesting--or you think I am a lousy reviewer!

I recently saw this film for the first time. A recent poster said this movie leans "against" social issues....I tend to see the film as capturing a dialectic between the personal and the political... it is political in at least 2 ways that I can see....1) it shows the outrageous inadequacy of bourgeois "democracy" to defend the interests of working people...the Mafia and its candidates who echo the ideology of fascism in the film represent capitalism as both the fulfillment and the negation of the democratic "facade"... (the lead character's descent into crass opportunism as well as his sexual aggression, it is to be noted, are NOT rewarded in the film...at the conclusion, he is profoundly alienated in a scene reminiscent of the final cut of Fellini's La Strada- probably some homage here).... 2) and this is probably the more dominant politically significant theme---this film attempts a radical critique of the institution of bourgeois marriage, through the destructive and artificial role that marriage plays in the film...not only in terms of the patriarchal double-standards, but in the institution's incapacity to most fully satisfy human strivings- female OR male.Whatever one can say about this film, I think anyone who sees it in anyway as a criticism of Communism is misreading the film....Certainly, a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) might understandably cringe at a Party supporter's (Mimi) sexual aggressiveness....but Mimi is apparently a Party "supporter" in the narrowest sense- only in the sense of voting for the Reds (remember PCI has long been a sizeable and popular Party in Italy), and by the end of the film he has DESCENDED to campaigning for a fascistic-Mafia-backed candidate....and the attitude of the PCI towards such a character as Mimi is symbolized by his comrades abandoning him in their red sickle-and- hammer-displaying wagon, disgusted at his sexism and misogyny, with hisopportunistic supporting of rightist candidates obviously the final straw....interestingly in La Strada, the lead character is much worse in terms of violence and maliciousness, and yet Wertmuller leaves us with LESS sympathy for Mimi than does Fellini for the lead role in La Strada, she thankfully spared us gratuitous "pitying" close-ups of Mimi bawling his eyes out.His girlfriend in Turin is NOT a Communist, i.e. a member of the PCI, as she makes clear, but apparently a former-Trotskyite-turned-quasi-Maoist who defensively emphasizes her "independence" from the Party (Trot to Maoist is an unlikelytransformation, btw, since Trots and Maoists are notoriously antipathic to each other-- the only thing uniting them being their dislike of the regular Communist Party)...anyway, if this is kind of ranty it's because I've only seen it once, and I have a lot of thoughts....if a movie gets me thinking like this one, it is on some level a success, I suppose. I enjoyed this film, and particularly felt the ending tied it all together well, and was more satisfying than I would have anticipated.