search

Divorce - Italian Style

1961 Social Satire Launched Its Own Genre

Divorce - Italian Style
Pietro Germi's farce features a married Sicilian baron (Marcello Mastroianni) who falls madly in love with his 16-year-old cousin. With divorce illegal in Italy, the Baron must plot a crime of passion to get the Baroness out of his way, in the first film of what would become an entire genre, Commedia all'italiana.
Review by Bosley Crowther, The New York Times
Marcello Mastroianni, the Italian actor who had the leading role in "La Dolce Vita" and what seems like at least half the important Italian films of recent years, surpasses himself as a comedian in "Divorce—Italian Style," a dandy satiric farce that opened at the Paris yesterday. And Pietro Germi, who directed and helped write the script, announces himself with this achievement as a master of farce in any style.

For here, in this nifty frolic about a bored Sicilian baron who plots to force his wife to compromise herself with another man so he can honorably shoot her and then marry a 16-year-old girl, the director and star have accomplished that very difficult and delicate thing of making murder seem an admirable ambition and the would-be murderer seem a sympathetic gent, all without violating reason or causing really serious moral offense.

To be sure, the assumption is outrageous— at least, to a non-Latin it is—that the "code of honor" might be craftily manipulated in order to "divorce" one's spouse. And the fact that the total population of a Sicilian city might be cunningly engineered into demanding and compelling the act of honor might seem beautifully and blissfully naïve.

But Mr. Germi has managed to establish his thesis so well, with a wonderfully droll illumination of the slippery characters of the community, and he has worked out his plot so deftly, with his tongue obviously in his cheek, that the whole arrangement seems not only respectable but also devilishly ingenious.

Indeed, ingenuity is the striking directorial quality one notes in the charmingly smooth, efficient and flexible flow of the film. Mr. Germi is a genius with the sly twist. With the deft fluidity of the dissolves, he wittily mingles the images of his hero's murderous fantasies with the humdrum actuality of his torpid and henpecked home.

And he gets out of Mr. Mastroianni a performance that hangs in one's mind as one of the most ingenious and distinctive comic characterizations that has lately been.

Not since Charlie Chaplin's beguiling Verdoux have we seen a deliberate wife killer so elegant and suave, so condescending in his boredom, so thoroughly and pathetically enmeshed in the suffocating toils of a woman as Mr. Mastroianni is here. His eyelids droop with a haughtiness and ennui that are only dispelled when he looks with a gaze of lecherous longing at his teenage cousin, whom Stefania Sandrelli plays.

With his wife, played by Daniela Rocca, he is weary, disgusted and sad—until he is hit by the inspiration to arrange an Italian "divorce."

Then his crafty maneuverings to discover and place the right man in what might be accepted as a shameful situation with his wife; his tricky arrangements of tape recorders and his lining up the proper lawyer in advance—these all are deliciously ingenious and grandly diabolic and droll.

Even to begin to hint at what happens and how nicely and ironically it ends would be to endanger your enjoyment, but be sure the humor holds to the end.

Mr. Mastroianni's performance is thoroughly complemented by the humorous uxorial enthusiasm that Miss Rocca provides. Miss Sandrelli is fetching as the girl who captivates, and Leopoldo Trieste is uproarious as the diffident and respectful "other man." Colorful and funny characterizations of Sicilian locals are turned in by Odoardo Spadaro, as the hero's father; Pietro Tordi, the sliver-tongued lawyer, Bianca Castagnetta, the hero's mother, and several more.

The background music, very Sicilian and romantic, is wittily and wistfully used, and the English subtitles of Rick Carrier catch and humor of the lively dialogue.

This is one of the funniest pictures the Italians have sent along.


Divorce - Italian Style

Wed October 15, 2008, 7:00 & 9:15, Muenzinger Auditorium

Italy, 1961, in Italian, Black and White, 105 min | UK:104 min, 1.85 : 1

recommend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZjLdseSUnM

Tickets

10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission. $7 w/UCB student ID, $7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.

Parking

Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.

RTD Bus

Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus

International Film Series

(Originally called The University Film Commission)
Established 1941 by James Sandoe.

First Person Cinema

(Originally called The Experimental Cinema Group)
Established 1955 by Carla Selby, Gladney Oakley, Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage.

C.U. Film Program

(AKA The Rocky Mountain Film Center)
First offered degrees in filmmaking and critical studies in 1989 under the guidance of Virgil Grillo.

Celebrating Stan

Created by Suranjan Ganguly in 2003.

C.U. Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

Established 2017 by Chair Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz.

Thank you, sponsors!
Boulder International Film Festival
Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

Looking for a gift for a friend?
Buy a Frequent Patron Punch Card for $60 at any IFS show. With the punch card you can see ten films (a value of $90).

We Want Your Feedback

Cox & Kjølseth
: Filmmaker Alex Cox & Pablo Kjølseth discuss film topics from their own unique perspectives.

Z-briefs
: Pablo and Ana share Zoom-based briefs on what's currently playing at IFS

Search IFS schedules

Index of visiting artists

Mon Apr 1, 2024

Hot Shots! Part Deux

At Muenzinger Auditorium

Sat Apr 20, 2024

Super Mario Bros.

At Muenzinger Auditorium

more on 35mm...