Two Italian Comedies

Two very funny Italian films I saw recently:

Divorce Italian Style is a nasty black comedy and a merciless social satire exposing the sexual hypocrisies of the Italian (Sicilian?) society. Ferdinando is living an oppressive life as a scion of an aristrocratic family whose best years are already past. He is also fed up with his silly wife and her smothering and clinging love. He instead is lusting after his seventeen year old cousin Angela, played by a very beautiful Stefania Sandrelli (who was also in The Conformist), who lives next door. The only problem is that the Italian law forbids divorce and so does the catholic church. What is to be done? Well, as it turns there is a way out. He finds out there is "an unwritten law" that if a man catches his wife in flagrante delicto he can actually get away with murder with a lenient sentence because he was actually protecting his and his society's honour. (The same thing applies to a woman too but in that case leniency is comparatively harder to get.) He hatches up a plan to lure a man to his wife and soon enough finds out an ex-flame of hers who is in town, leading to some predictable and other not so predictable consequences.

The film very deservedly won an Oscar for best screenplay which is quite rare for a foreign film. Every dialogue crackles with wit and sarcasm. There is specially a scene in the courtroom in which the lawyer for the defence holds forth on the concept of honour in such a grandiloquent manner that it is to be seen to be believed (he manages to bring in Shakespeare, Crusades and history of Christianity). The film also won an Oscar nomination for Marcello Mastroianni and his performance in this film was one big surprise for me. Just a few posts back I was complaining of him being miscast in Visconti's Le Notti Bianche as a shy, awkward lonely young man and speculated that it might be because of his image of suave, sophisticated and attractive guy with too-bored-to-care attitude that he perfected in films like La Dolce Vita. Watching him in this film was a revelation. He plays the sleazy smooth-guy with hair brilliantined and smoking cigarettes through plastic holders with such relish that I was wondering if he was the same guy who played Marcello in La Dolce Vita. In fact Fellini's film itself is used as a subject of satire. In one of the key scenes of the film the whole town and even people from the neighbouring village gather in the local theatre for a screening of the film. (In an earlier scene a bishop in the church is shown to be fulminating against the film.) A man who is ogling Anita Ekberg in the classic fountain scene, after getting disapproving looks from his girlfriend, explains, "she is beautiful, but she has no soul" showing how Fellini's film was actually received in his own country and how his aims and his ideas fell flat on common people. Rest of the supporting cast is also great and so is the music score (which was nominated for an Oscar too.) A great comedy classic, not to be missed.

****

Big Deal on Madonna Street is a hilarious riff on the classic caper films like The Asphalt Jungle, Rififi, The Killing and others. Some familiarity with these films is required to appreciate the humour of the film. The basic behind all these films is the same. A bunch of down on luck criminals led by a brilliant mastermind embark upon a crime with which they plan to alter their course of life forever. The meticulousness and intelligence with which they plan the heist is designed to make one think that nothing can go wrong but a malevolent fate is always scheming against them and they can't resist or go back even if they know they are headed to their sure doom. The solemnity of such films makes for an easy parody and satire, as this film indeed shows. As Bruce Eder says in this essay, "If the action in Monicelli’s film is governed by a personified deity, it’s not the vengeful, dark God of American film noir, but a cheerful, whimsical God who smiles and appreciates a good practical joke." It also riffs on many neo-realist films dealing with the petty criminals and replaces their pessimistic social critique with good humoured social and character observation. So in this case we have a petty criminal, played again by Mastroianni (actually a cameraless photographer), who is taking care of his baby and whose wife is in jail for selling smuggled cigarettes. There is a boxer character too, staple of quite a few noir films. Every one of them sees working for money as something below his dignity. In the end when two of them find themselves mistaken for workers they can't believe it. "Do I look like someone who works for a living?" he asks. That's the problem of lumpen proletariat, the film seems to be saying! Very funny overall. My only gripe with the film was that Claudia Cardinale was completely wasted in a two-bit role. She is an actress of middling talents but she looks really hot in the few scenes she has in the film. If she had more scenes it could have saved me some time and effort spent in pausing and rewinding. Still a wonderfully entertaining film.