When the war ends, do you follow orders or simply go home?
In short: In 1960, Luigi Comencini released a film that captured the chaotic collapse of the Italian army following the 1943 armistice. As soldiers faced the choice between duty and survival, the narrative shifted from military discipline to a desperate, human odyssey across a country fractured by occupation and civil war.
Everybody Go Home, or Tutti a casa, is a cornerstone of the Commedia all'italiana genre. Set during the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943, the film follows Alberto Innocenzi, a junior lieutenant who finds his world upended when the Wehrmacht turns on their former Italian allies. While Innocenzi initially seeks to report to a higher command, he is confronted by a pervasive sentiment among his men: the war is over, and it is time to return to their families.
The film tracks the journey of Innocenzi and his companions, engineer Ceccarelli and sergeant Fornaciari, as they navigate a landscape defined by German and Allied occupation, partisan warfare, and the constant threat of press-ganging. Their odyssey is marked by moral ambiguity and survivalist instincts. Innocenzi, for instance, briefly abandons his comrades to assist a black marketeer in smuggling flour to Rome, only to return after the venture fails. The group’s experiences highlight the disintegration of social order, from witnessing the execution of a soldier protecting a Jewish girl to the tragic arrest of Fornaciari for harboring an escaped U.S. prisoner of war.
The narrative reaches a climax in Naples, where the characters encounter the brutal reality of German occupation and the desperate resistance of the local populace. After Ceccarelli is killed during the Four Days of Naples uprising, Innocenzi undergoes a final transformation. Abandoning his earlier indecision, he joins an insurgent band, taking up a captured Breda M 37 machine gun to fight the occupiers. In 2008, the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage recognized the film’s significance, including it on a list of 100 works that fundamentally altered the country's collective memory between 1942 and 1978.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Everybody Go Home
- Also: Everybody Go Home
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