Le miserie del signor Travet (1945)

Mr. Ignazio Travet is a civil servant in late nineteenth-century Turin, where he has worked as a clerk in the same office for 32 years. Although he is conscientious and meticulous at work, he has never been promoted in all that time because of the section chief’s unfounded hostility toward him. Travet is a mild and submissive man who never dares to stand up for himself—not even at home, where his second wife, Rosa, still young and beautiful, never misses an opportunity to mistreat him and make him serve her ambitions. But a commander, one of his superiors, happens to enter Travet’s life and brings new troubles into the Travet household. Woven into the main story are the tale of an unforgettable pest, played by Sordi, and the story of the troubled engagement of Travet’s daughter, Marianin, to a young man whom Rosa, Travet’s wife, considers to be of lower social standing because he is a baker’s son. Mrs. Travet allows the commander to court her, and Travet, in response, rebels against his colleagues’ insinuations and is dismissed. Putting prejudice aside, he adapts to working in a bakery.