Nameless (Io so che tu sai che io so)

Created by Alberto Sordi, Augusto Caminito, and Rodolfo Sonego

Okay, this one’s a real stretch…

Less a private eye film than a film that uses the private eye as a catalyst, offering a cock-eyed look at the aftermath of a private eye’s investigation., the 1982 Italian comedy Io so che tu sai che io so (“I Know That You Know That I Know” in English) is just funny enough and intriguing enough to include on this site.

An agency run by THE DETECTIVE (we never any of their names, or if we do, I missed it) has been hired by a wealthy businessman in Rome, to follow his wife Elena, whom he suspects of being up to something.

Only problem? The young op assigned to the case totally botches the assignment, and ends up filming the wrong woman for a couple of weeks. And then the agency compounds the error by revealing the results to her husband.

Ooops.

Fabio Bonetti, a middle-aged and decidedly not-wealthy bank clerk who has been married to his wife Livia for over twenty long years, is blindsided. As played by noted Italian comic actor Alberto Sordi, who also directed and co-wrote the film, he’s a simple everyman whose only pleasure (or even interest) in life appears to be watching soccer on television. Therefore, he’s shocked–shocked, I tell you, shocked!–to discover that their teenaged daughter is a junkie, his wife Livia (played by the equally celebrated Monica Vitti) is having an affair, and that he himself has contacted a fatal but unnamed disease.

Fearing he has only days to live, Fabio decides to finally take charge of his life, and vows to do anything he can to set the world–or at least his family–right.

With outrageous and increasingly frantic but hilarious results, Sordi and Vitti are great as the long-married couple rediscovering each other. And the view of the era’s rapidly changing society shows there’s some meat on these bones, capped off by a–so help me–heartwarming conclusion.

Now if only I understood what the hell they were saying…