Il volpone is an Italian movie directed in 1988 by Maurizio Ponzi

Maurizio Ponzi

Maurizio Ponzi is an Italian film director, screenwriter and cinema critic.Born in Rome, he wrote cinema reviews in several Italian magazines during the early 1960s...

, inspired by Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...

's comedy with the same name

Volpone

Volpone is a comedy by Ben Jonson first produced in 1606, drawing on elements of city comedy, black comedy and beast fable...

.

Set in the Liguria

Liguria

Liguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy, the third smallest of the Italian regions. Its capital is Genoa. It is a popular region with tourists for its beautiful beaches, picturesque little towns, and good food.-Geography:...

n Riviera during the 1980s, it features Paolo Villaggio

Paolo Villaggio

Paolo Villaggio is an Italian actor, writer, director and comedian.-Life:Villaggio was born in Genoa in 1932. His jobs included being a clerk for the Italsider steel major which inspired his character "Il ragioniere Fantozzi Ugo", "the accountant Ugo Fantozzi"...

 as Ugo Maria Volpone, a rich but apparently ill ship company owner. He is surrounded by a series of relatives and friends (played by Enrico Maria Salerno

Enrico Maria Salerno

Enrico Maria Salerno was an Italian theatre & film actor, also a film director. He was also the voice of Clint Eastwood in the Italian version of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy films, and the voice of Christ in The Gospel According to St...

, Renzo Montagnani

Renzo Montagnani

Renzo Montagnani was an Italian film and theatre actor and dubber.Montagnani was born in Alessandria, Piedmont, and debuted as theatre actor thanks to the help of Erminio Macario...

, Alessandro Haber

Alessandro Haber

Alessandro Haber is an Italian actor, film director and singer.Haber was born in Bologna in a Jewish family of mixed ancestry and spent his childhood in Israel. His movie debut was in 1967 with La Cina è vicina by Marco Bellocchio...

) who blandish him in order to inherit his estate. The shrewd Volpone, in return, organizes a hoax against them to betray their greed. In the movie, he his joined by a new waiter, Bartolomeo Mosca (Enrico Montesano

Enrico Montesano

Enrico Montesano, born in Rome, Italy on 7 June 1945, is a popular actor for theater and cinema in Italy, as well as a showman. He starred in the 1977 film Pane, burro e marmellata and the 1978 film Le braghe del padrone, both times alongside Adolfo Celi.-Career:Montesano comes from a family...

), who quickly shows himself to be as cunning as Volpone in arranging humiliations.