The Stranger

All but forgotten in this country after its 1962 release, Alberto Lattuada's film (now receiving a well-deserved theatrical revival) feels fresh as a daisy. Fellini regular Alberto Sordi stars as Antonio Badalamenti, a tight-assed Fiat assembly-line foreman prized by his supervisors for his attention to detail. Such devotion to order, however, threatens to be his undoing after he gathers up his wife and kids for a dream vacation in his native Sicily. Once there, Antonio's affection for the old ways attracts the attention of the local crime lord, for whom he did favors as a boy. (Critics have been warned against revealing what happens in the final act, but suffice it to say that it involves an unrefusable offer.) Throughout, Lattuada's bubbly style slips effortlessly between Mad magazine–type parody (the Sicilian townsfolk are depicted as gap-toothed, excessively hairy urchins) and a chillier, mod absurdism. See Stranger Suggests for review. By Andrew Wright