UN DOLLARO PER 7 VIGLIACCHI (MADIGAN'S MILLIONS)

Italy, 1967, 86 minutes, Colour.
Elsa Martinelli, Cesar Romero, Dustin Hoffman.
Directed by Giorgio Gentili.

Madigan’s Millions is an Italian production with a Spanish screenwriter. It is interesting principally for one of the earliest roles of Dustin Hoffman, playing a Treasury Department agent who is tracking down a million dollars owed to the government by a deported gangster, played by Cesar Romero.

The film is slight – and was released only after The Graduate when Hoffman had made a significant impact.

1. Was this an entertaining comedy? Why?

2. The film received only minimal theatre release. Why? Was the film of poor quality? Was it a financial risk?

3. How did the film satirise the United States and Italy? Did it do it well?

4. How broad was the satire of the film? Of personalities as well as national ways of behaviour? Was the satire effective or would audiences have just considered the comedy?

5 The character of Jason Fister? was he a rounded character, a caricature? How did Dustin Hoffman make him a comic character? Especially the 'little man'? Was his behaviour too far-fetched and stupid? Or genuinely comical and satirical of Americans and of women?

6. What was being satirised in Arpo as an Italian policeman looking like a gangster? Burke as the American diplomat?

7. The picture of gangsters in Rome? how comic was this? How realistic? Did it genuinely add suspense to the comedy?

8. Did the character of Vicky and her son add anything to the film? What? What kind of a person was Vicky?

9. Did the film have genuinely human elements as well as its comedy?