The Traffic Policeman
1960 film by Luigi Zampa
The Traffic Policeman (Italian: Il vigile) is a 1960 Italian comedy film directed by Luigi Zampa and starring Alberto Sordi in the lead role. A representative of the commedia all'italiana genre, it tells the story of a traffic policeman and the injustice he endures for daring to enforce the law at the expense of people in power.
Plot
Otello Celletti is a war veteran from a small town in Latium. He has been unemployed since the end of the war and lives with his father, wife Amalia and their son, at the expense of his brother-in-law. When he is offered a menial job in the town's markets thanks to his son heroism in saving the drowning son of a council member, Otello refuses in disdain. After vehemently insisting with the town's Mayor and by leveraging his veteran status and war wounds, Otello eventually obtains a position with the local traffic police, which he immediately use to assert himself on his neighbors and acquaintances who had been mocking his lazyness. He performs his duties poorly and abuses his authority to exact petty revenge upon those who had been teasing him while jobless, including his brother in law who had been hosting and supporting him.
One day, Otello finds himself offering roadside assistance to famous actress Sylva Koscina. He indulges in pleasantries with the actress, inviting her for coffee and opting not to fine her for missing her driving license and car documents, while making his son fix her car. That night, during a guest appearance on the television program Il Musichiere in front of 18 million viewers, Sylva publicly greets Otello but, at the insistence of host Mario Riva, and she also reveals how Otello let her go when he should have fined or even arrested her.
“The Traffic Policeman” enters the record as 1960 film by Luigi Zampa. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Traffic, Policeman and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3796254. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Traffic Policeman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.