Italian director Mario Monicelli dies at 95

ROME - Deftly mixing comedy with tragedy, director Mario Monicelli laid bare Italy's flaws and sins for a half-century on the screen.

In his final script of his own life, he chose a dramatic ending: Plunging off the fifth-floor balcony of a Rome hospital Monday night where he had been admitted several days earlier.

Monicelli, 95, was being treated for prostate cancer at the San Giovanni hospital when he leaped to his death.

Monicelli's 1959 movie "The Great War" tells the tragicomical story of two young Italians - played by Gassman and Sordi - who try to avoid going to the front during World War I.

The film, by some considered Monicelli's finest work and the best Italian comedy of all, was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language movie and won Monicelli a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. - AP