The Seduction of Mimi (1972)

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

In Sicily, the mine worker Carmelo "Mimí" Mardocheo (Giancarlo Giannini) votes in the Communist Party candidate instead of in the Mafia's one believing that the suffrage is secret. After the elections, he loses his job and cannot find any other job in his village that is controlled by the mobster Don Calogero (Turi Ferro). He leaves his wife Rosalia (Agostina Belli) with his family and travels to Turin expecting to find a job.He finds an illegal position in the civil construction that is also explored by the Mafia and when a coworker dies in an accident, he finds that the mobsters have dumped his body on the road. However, he does not report the crime to the police and lies to the mobster Salvatore Tricarico (Turi Ferro) telling that he belongs to the family of a powerful mobster. Mimi gets a metallurgic position and joins the Communist Party. Then he fall in love with the virgin Trotskyite street vendor Fiorella Meneghini (Mariangela Melato) and they have a boy.When Mimi witness the mobster Vico Tricarico (Turi Ferro) executing several men in a hotel, he survives but he does not report to the police. Mimi is transferred to Catania in a supervisory position against his will. He brings Fiore and their son to Sicily, but he is still married with Rosalia but he claims that he is ill and does not have sex with her. When Mimi learns that Rosalia is pregnant, he finds that he is a cuckold and plots a scheme to seduce and knock up Amalia Finocchiaro (Elena Fiore), who is the wife of Rosalia's lover. But his revenge does not work as planned."Mimì metallurgico ferito nell'onore" is a bitter satire by Lina Wertmüller about a naive and ignorant Sicilian worker that entwines his honor with class warfare, politics and mafia in his miserable life with tragicomic consequences. I saw this movie in the 70's or 80's and today I have just watched the Brazilian DVD that is unfortunately edited to 108 minutes running time. I am a fan of the Italian director Lina Wertmüller and I like this unfunny satire about honor, moral and culture that is dated in the present days but it is impossible to laugh with the ignorance of Mimi and most of his countrymen. This weird movie may be lost between comedy and drama but for me it is an original and cult view of Italy in the early 70's. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "Mimi, O Metalúrgico" ("Mimi, The Metallurgic")

If I were to advice one movie by Lina Wetrmuller - one of the finest Italian directors ever - it would be this one. For this and other movies, you miss a lot of it if you're not Italian, both for the language and for the politics. It is also one of the most political, as it gives a rather crude display of how the industrialized north of Italy exploited the manpower of the less developed south. But it's also a moving love and passion story, and an hilarious comedy. Also, the Giannini-Melato duo is at its best. SORT OF A SPOILER AHEAD: I think the message it delivers is rather a pessimistic and disillusioning one: Mimi' tries to keep his political ideals and his (relatively to his background!) advanced view on love and relationships, but is then bound to fall back to his conservative cultural heritage: on the sentimental side, he's still too jealous of his wife to let her live as free as him; on the political side, as he says in the end, "they're all cousins!" - there's no point in fighting the collusion of political, economical and criminal power that we still have in Italy..

this is incredible movie. i dunno why they changed it to 'seduction of Mimi' instead of 'metalworker' because its about this metal worker dude and how his lust, his ideas about his job and taking care of his kid and buying things for his kid, and his communist lover and her idealistic anti capitalism and his real wife back in Sicily and his seduction of a politicos wife to get back at him for cheating with the metalworkers wife... and the mafia always trying to control him,and in the end.. he loses it all! tragic but oh so realistic... god damn! i could see a lot of guys i know as this dude, even tho I'm 30 years later in a different country.

As always, Giannini and Melato are the shining stellas in yet another of the Wertmueller's movies. The two of them alone make this film worth seeing (though this time it's more Giannini since Melato's role is not as demanding as in some later films). However, compared to some other realizations by the same director-two-actors trio, this film does not strike as equally capturing and consistent in its message. Heavily leaning against social issues (remember "Swept Away"?), but bringing to the front the romance/fidelity/honor plot, it apparently fails to round up either of them. Not even the diversion into the familiar Italian-honor humor towards the end of the film is able to pull out the hanging feeling. Those who love the genre will still not regret spending their time with this movie.