The film is constructed on a contemporary requirement tied to the wartime situation, seeing as Italy had gone to war with Austria in May of 1915. At the end of the wedding ceremony the procession of newlyweds, parents and friends sets off along a road in Turin. The group finds itself in front of a poster that provides advice in case of an aerial attack by Zeppelins. Cretinetti, shocked, tears the poster and takes it with him to make sure that he won’t forget anything. The recommendations focus on the need to have sand bags and buckets of water to hand to put out any fires caused by the bombs. Once he has arrived home, as the guests settle down for the wedding lunch, Cretinetti busies himself: he orders some sand bags and in the bathroom prepares some buckets and bowls with water. He then pushes the bathtub full of water in the sitting room, causing the first disasters in the apartment. Cretinetti and his young bride – the not very seductive and large Léonie Laporte – retire to the bridal chamber, overflowing with all sorts of containers. Their grotesque amusements do not prevent Cretinetti from being constantly obsessed by the ‘fear of enemy aircraft’. The poster, which he always carries with him, also talks about the alarm that will be given with a siren. In the meantime outside the bourgeois home, a chauffeur in uniform calls the female caretaker, his lover, with a hoot of his horn. Cretinetti, in his room, mistakes the horn with the siren: seized by panic he flaps about like a mad- man amongst the buckets of water…

Jean A. Gili