Amore Mio Aiutami (aka Help Me My Love) (1969)

When his wife (Monica Vitti) confesses her attraction to another man (Silvano Tranquilli), her husband (Alberto Sordi) becomes jealous and spies on her and even uses their 10 year old son (Maurzio Davini) in an attempt to stave off the affair from being consummated. Directed by Alberto Sordi, this is a bizarre and unsettling comedy that was a big box office hit in Italy (Sordi and Vitti were Italy's top box office stars) but it never received a U.S. release and it's easy to see why. It's overlong for a comedy (it runs over two hours) but the film switches gears in the middle of the movie. The first half seems to be a typical Italian comedy about infidelity but halfway through the film, Sordi gives Vitti a brutal beating, a beating so bad that she loses her hearing in one ear and has to be taken to the hospital. Remember this is a comedy! The film's tone gets consistently darker after that and heads to a downbeat conclusion. The film never quite recovers from that shocking brutal beating and one loses sympathy for both Sordi and Vitti. That being said, I was hooked just to find out where the movie was going and where it would end up. With Laura Adani and Ugo Gregoretti.