Il marito - 1958

An italian, black and white film, with one of Italy's all times' best actors: Alberto Sordi.
Elena and Alberto get married, move to their new house, and troubles starts away. I must admit that in just ten minutes time, I already despised all the female characters in this film: the wife, her sister, her mother, his sister... stupid, selfish and with such and overbearing attitute... aaargh. Anyway.  Elena fires the young pretty maid who never wears a bra to avoid temptations to her husband, and starts acting all annoying: it seems a collections of all the things that in bad jokes men say about wives. Ball-chain and stuff.
He can't go out with his friends anymore, he can't go to the stadium to his his favourite football team play (soccer), she calls him during work-hours for futile motives, causing him troubles. She invites her mother and her sister to live with them without consulting with him first, and only thinks about spending money or finding a husband for her sister. Really, dreadful, unbearable. There's a bit of italian philosophy, when pointing out that if a man could steal from the state, he must be a smart one. There's his sister, who's always nagging "you're so lucky, give us some money" not troubling at all to find out if he's really so lucky and wealthy. He's not doing very well at work, and they all made things much worse.
When a con-man pretends to be interested in a relationship with her sister, Alberto is sure he's only aiming at selling him a new car, but Elena and her mother don't listen to him: of course after selling him his car, the man disappears, leaving the girl alone. The last straw for poor Alberto arrives with a wealthy widow, who might save his firm with her money. The widow keeps flirting with Alberto, so he goes out with her trying to talk business but his sister-in-law sees him and tells everything to Elena. Alberto was supposed to go on a trip with the widow, confident to close the deal, but at that point he gets a phone call saying his wife is feeling really bad; he's worried sick, runs to the hospital and hears an angry doctor saying how she wasted his time, being completely healthy as she is. Alberto understands what happened, how they planned it, causing him to loose the deal, meaning the widow's money help, causing his firm to fail.
At the end, we see him with a new job as a travel salesman, caring no more about whatever those women do at the house, being away as he is travelling most of the time, presenting himself as a single man to every pretty girl he meets, far away from wife, sister, sister-in-law, mother-in-law....

Well done, yes, but the story... I didn't like the story, such stereotype like I've never seen in real life.