Macaroni

It sounds so improbable it could never work. Yet, in the hands of Jack Lemmon and Marcello Mastroianni, Ettore Scola's tale of the surly businessman who rediscovers the simple joys of life from an eccentric Neapolitan exercises an irresistible charm right through to its closing note of quiet optimism. Discovering that Marcello has continued writing love letters to the heartbroken sister GI Jack jilted at the end of the war, Lemmon gratefully succumbs to the companionship absent from his troubled life. But it's Mastroianni's picture: he flits between reality and illusion as if there was no dividing line between them.