Ugo Fantozzi

Ugo Fantozzi is the main titular protagonist of the famous and homonymous Italian multimedia franchise, including a series of novels, a film series and some comics. It was created by the late actor Paolo Villaggio, who wrote all his books and also played it in all the films in the saga.
Fantozzi's character was created in 1968 in a television program, Quelli della Domenica, in which Villaggio played a stereotypically unfortunate Italian employee, called "Giandomenico Fracchia" (who was also the protagonist of a couple of films, the second of which it's a crossover with Dracula).
 
==Life and characterization==
Ugo Fantozzi is an unfortunate accountant employed for years in an imaginary company called "Megaditta" (composite word that should mean "Big Firm") managed by managers with almost inhuman cruelty, and within which he suffers the most disparate harassment (also illegal, such as psychophysical torture and murder threats). Fantozzi is married to Pina, a simple and physically sloppy woman, of whom he is not particularly satisfied, both in human relationships and in sexual life (so much so that the two have sometimes betrayed each other and have also been close to divorce) but he actually loves more than he himself wants to admit (feeling that Pina never manages to externalize, simply saying "I respect you very much" ("Io ti stimo moltissimo") . The two have a daughter named Mariangela, with a horrifying physical appearance and poor intelligence - to the point of being constantly mistaken for a monkey, in fact a recurring gag in the various films is the fright of strangers at his sight - fright that involves him Fantozzi himself - or the confusion of those who turn to her the word "bambina" ("female baby", in Italian) with "babbuina" ("female baboon") -, who was seduced by a womanizer and gave birth to Ughina, initially born with a formless aspect (comically described in a similar way to the Thing of the homonymous film name by John Carpenter) and then became identical to the mother. With his daughter and granddaughter, Fantozzi has an equally fluctuating relationship: on the one hand he shows that he loves them and defends them from harassment, on the other he proves intolerant both to their appearance and to their behavior, and sometimes he has even come to physical violence especially against Mariangela. On one occasion both he and Pina are evicted from Mariangela - in the meantime married to a monkey-like monster named Bongo - but Fantozzi's death apparently seems to have brought his daughter and his wife closer.At work Fantozzi is made an object of ridicule and humiliation, both by colleagues and by managers, towards whom he often shows a servile and submissive attitude, addressing managers with excessively obsequious terms. The only colleague with whom he seems to have a good relationship (although he is also quite fluctuating) is the accountant Filini, a man suffering from severe nearsightedness and considerable ingenuity, with a natural propensity for business organizations that involves his business colleagues or only Fantozzi, often and willingly with disastrous results. At work there is also the main love interest of Fantozzi, Miss Silvani, a vulgar and opportunistic woman who, aware of the man's love interest for her, does not hesitate to take advantage of him if he could get a profit personal (such as when she lies to him telling him that she was pregnant by him to extort a large sum of money necessary to undergo numerous surgeries or when she agrees to get engaged to him believing that he won the lottery and therefore became rich). Despite this, even Miss Silvani sometimes seems to return Fantozzi's interest. Fantozzi's rival in love is the accountant Calboni, a womanizer worker and careerist (appeared in only four films in the series and then eliminated due to the death of the actor who played him, but present in most of the books in the series and in some comics ) always ready to ingratiate himself with the managers to get bonuses in the workplace and who married Silvani and then betray her on some occasions.
The main feature of Fantozzi is his proverbial misfortune: in addition to humiliations in the workplace he is often conditioned, he is often involved in situations in which fate turns against him in tragicomic situations in which he suffers even serious physical damage, suffers violence and bullying from part of strangers (usually beaten or being forced to ingest inedible objects, such as a couple of batteries) or even where he inadvertently ends up killing people. Furthermore, a recurring gag is the more or less involuntary distortion of his surname by many characters (mostly its leaders, but also many strangers), often being called Fantocci, Bambocci, Cagnacci etc. Even the surrounding environment seems to bend to his misfortune, manifesting curious phenomena (the best known is certainly the Employee Cloud, a small storm cloud that chases him, unloading gusts of rain on him, other cases concern a drink dispenser that steals his coins and normally dispenses drinks to other people who use them, or the echo of a cave that "answers" insulting him, rather than pronouncing his name). Many characters refer to him as "Merdaccia" (derogatory term roughly translatable into "Big Shit").Despite his role as "victim", Fantozzi also had rare moments of rebellion: one of the best known consists of the attack and kidnapping of Professor Guidobaldo Maria Riccardelli, a his superior very fanatic of the arthouse cinema that forced every Friday night employees of the company to watch famous films of the expressionist period - in particular La Corazzata Kotiomkin (The Battleship Kotiomkin), parody of the famous movie The Battleship Potemkin - cruelly punishing anyone who dared to fall asleep while watching the film (punishment which Fantozzi obviously did not escape). This event happened due to the exasperation of Fantozzi for not being able to follow a game of the World Cup - a sport he is passionate about to the limit of fanaticism - and was preceded by the historic phrase (which has become iconic in Italian popular culture). "Per me La Corazzata Kotiomkin è una cagata pazzesca!" ("For me The Battleship Kotiomkin is a crazy shit"), followed by 92 uninterrupted minutes of applause. However, these moments of rebellion have rarely ended satisfactorily. Furthermore, despite his servility to his superiors, he has repeatedly shown that he hates them, showing a much more intolerant attitude to corporate life than it might seem. He also proves intolerant of modern foods (he has shown disorientation in front of a cheeseburger even trying to "twist" it with a fork as he would have done with a plate of spaghetti, a dish he is fond of) and sometimes expresses himself in highly ungrammatical jargon, crippling some words for the difficulty of pronouncing them.In the eighth film of the saga (Fantozzi in Heaven) Fantozzi dies after being crushed by a road roller. Even in Paradise, unfortunately, he did not find peace and was persecuted by bad luck. However, he has come back to life twice: in the ninth episode he is allowed to return for a period of 5 years, only to return to Heaven at the end of it. In the tenth episode, set in 1999, he is cloned by the company executives, who felt the lack of an employee willing to act of servility compared to younger employees, with a more rebellious and modern mentality. 
==Powers and abilities==
Fantozzi seems to live in a cartoon-like universe traced along the lines of the Looney Tunes cartoons: as such he is endowed with skills such as great physical endurance (he survived fatal accidents, falls, bumps, beatings by several people, aggressions by animals, lighting injuries and explosions), a sort of healing factor (you can see it breaking bones and teeth, burning and injuring itself with sharp objects and then healing after a short time), and a great malleability of the body typical of cartoon characters such as Tom & Jerry (lengthening of arms and legs, swelling of the ears after listening to very loud music, the ability to swell and float in the air after drinking numerous bottles of carbonated water). He also survived after ingesting lethal objects (such as the tongue of a beer can or two stacks).
==Symbolism==
The character of Fantozzi, in the intentions of Villaggio, was born as an evident criticism and parody of the numerous uses, customs and traditions of Italy in the twentieth century, in particular those of the Italian lower-middle class. Both films and books deal with the topic with a mixture of cynicism and irreverent irony, accompanied by deliberately and ironically exasperated descriptions.
==Heredity==
The character of Fantozzi has immediately obtained a great success at home. Many of the phrases and expressions contained in the films and books have become an indissoluble part of Italian jargon, and the character has created a large following of clones and imitations protagonists of as many films (all interpreted by Villaggio), as well as having influenced numerous satirical or comic-demential films and television programs.
==Trivia==
*Fantozzi is very similar to Donald Duck: in many comic versions (especially the stories made in Italy), Donald shares similar characteristics to Fantozzi as a disproportionate dose of bad luck, a sentimental life that is not always satisfactory and the tendency to be exploited by tyrannical employers or from his uncle.
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