Borghesio came to the set dressed like a director: blue blazer with gold buttons, scarf open at the neck, hat with visor. He was crazy, full of reckless passion: he had once been in the Mille Miglia. He had been a correspondent for “Corriere della sera”. But his career was cut short after he had criticized England’s colonization of Kenya. We scripted three films for him with Macario, produced by Luigi Rovere: Come persi la guerra (1948), L’eroe della strada (1949) and Come scopersi l’America (1950). (…) Ours was a surreal comedy to which we added surrealist elements, mindful of Chaplin’s teachings. Writing these films, Steno and I found our true stylistic hallmark. We portrayed a real hardship, the hardship of the common man after the war, which had a real impact on audiences.

Mario Monicelli, from Sebastiano Mondadori, La commedia umana. Conversazioni con Mario Monicelli, Il Saggiatore, Milan 2005

We were already aware that Italians did not belong to the clan of great warriors. But Come persi la guerra (…) dispels our remaining illusions with verve. I would also say that its frankness is almost stupefying. (…) We have to think that the military supervisors of the Italian censorship board have less demanding views of the stoicism expected of a foot soldier! (…) Chaplin had shown us the comic dynamism of placing an innocent, good guy in the dangerous and thundering context of war. And the director Carlo Borghesio had apparently studied his predecessors’ gags a lot before making his lm. He was no miser with gags, and many are excellent. There is a hilarious phonograph shell in an American propaganda speech, an exceptional jiu-jitsu match, an electric razor ingeniously plugged into barbed wire, an extremely rigid anti-Hitler fighting the war, hidden in the closet, an execution that turns into a game of blind man’s bluff, and much more… Our amusement was mostly with the war developments that lead our “coward” to change uniform more often than his shirt! The greatest moment, in my opinion, is when two enemy patrols, both ordered to install a telephone, work away without seeing each other in the same tunnel and connect the two commands!
I was rather disappointed with Macario. Despite his strong Italian flavor, he lacks “presence”.

Raymond Barkan, Sept ans de malheur: une amusante satire contre la guerre, “L’Écran français”, n. 178, 23 November 1948.