"Giovanni Alberti is an unforgettable character in a very memorable film." – The Film Review

Businessman Giovanni is living way beyond his means in swinging Rome: cash-flowing a wife with expensive tastes and keeping pace with the sun-tanned crowd they run with. Up to his eyeballs in debt, he's now desperate enough to consider a bizarre financial lifeline.

This stylish and biting comedy comes from the middle part of director Vittorio de Sica's career. He was long past the neorealism of the ‘40s and yet, as in his masterpiece Bicycle Thieves, this much later film makes a point about what money, or the lack of it, can do to a person's dignity.

With a magnetic performance by contemporary comic star Alberto Sordi in the central role and a toe-tapping soundtrack by Piero Piccioni, The Boom offers an acerbically satirical trip to Italian society of the ‘60s.

For further information on The Boom, read the Senses of Cinema dossier.