It is perhaps the best example of Eduardo as a director, initially conceived as a depiction of greed for the omnibus film I sette peccati capitali and then becoming instead the first segment of a film about marital difficulty. It takes its narrative starting point from Maupassant and his short novella, Tonio (the submissiveness of the man and the bitterness of the woman), which is then embellished in a clever and subtle way. The woman’s recriminations express the exasperation of generations of women who were forced to work for lazy and irresponsible men; in the man’s complaints is heard the claim for a role he does not want to abdicate (and which the men of the town take for granted). It all ends with a war of poverty and family roles, of greed and pride and the battle of the sexes which Eduardo and Tina Pica play out wonderfully.

Paolo Mereghetti