This book centralizes four commedie all'italiana, much acclaimed Italian comedy films of the immediate post-Second World War period (1952-1968), to illustrate a postcolonial critique that overtly ridicules the colonial mindset of the italiano medio (the standard Italian) protagonists and increasingly centralizes Black subjectivity.

Combining perspectives from Italian Studies, Postcolonial Theory, and Film Studies, the author illustrates how this 'Black Other' becomes a crucial figure for the articulation of the comic figure of the italiano medio. Before Postcolonial Theory became an academic discipline, these films offered critique on the colonial mindset displayed by the protagonists, by increasingly centralizing Black subjectivity.

The construction of an Italian identity in these films is strongly linked to the past-the Italian colonial undertakings; the present-the challenging years of the Reconstruction of a country that has lost the Second World War; and the future-as these films foreshadow the current socio-political crises many European nation-states find themselves in.