Divorce Italian Style
1961 ‘Divorzio all'italiana’ Directed by Pietro Germi
Synopsis
A married Sicilian baron falls in love with his cousin and vows to wed her, but with divorce illegal he must concoct a crime of passion to do away with his wife.
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A Sunday afternoon respite from my more usual, of late, darker and edgier, exploitation movies, allows me to watch again, after a gap of many years, this post neo-realist gem from director, Pietro Germi. Still shot in some way as the neo-realist films were, with stunning b/w cinematography, much location shooting and those streets filled with emotionally charged locals, but without the sentimentality that could mar the earlier films. A comic opera of a tale, full of family honour and dishonour, male entitlement and female subservience. Not that light for a Sunday afternoon then! But this is deftly done with light touches and strong sense of humour. The heartfelt traditions and cornerstones of Italian society, or more especially, here Sicilian…
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A quirky, Italian comedy on the terrors of being married to a woman with the worst laugh ever!
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Marcello Mastroianni is such a badass.
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A Sunday afternoon respite from my more usual, of late, darker and edgier, exploitation movies, allows me to watch again, after a gap of many years, this post neo-realist gem from director, Pietro Germi. Still shot in some way as the neo-realist films were, with stunning b/w cinematography, much location shooting and those streets filled with emotionally charged locals, but without the sentimentality that could mar the earlier films. A comic opera of a tale, full of family honour and dishonour, male entitlement and female subservience. Not that light for a Sunday afternoon then! But this is deftly done with light touches and strong sense of humour. The heartfelt traditions and cornerstones of Italian society, or more especially, here Sicilian…
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A quirky, Italian comedy on the terrors of being married to a woman with the worst laugh ever!
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A pretty hilarious Italian version of "unfaithfully yours."
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Sarkastisks un cinisks skatījums uz laulības dzīvi un pusmūža krīzes komisko un tai pat laikā skumjo pusi. Patīkami melns itāļu kino humors.
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Divorzio all'italiana
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Divorzio all'italiana
Love and marriage, divorce and murder of unfaithful and/or unwanted spouses are all looked in this rather funny and very cynical Italian film. A film which doesn't finish as I expected, with a nice little twist at the end. -
37 year old Sicilian Baron Ferdinando has tired of his wife Rosalia and has turned his eye instead on his 16 year old cousin Angela. Divorce isn't a legal option, so he concocts the next best thing: he'll conspire to push his wife into an affair of her own, justifying her murder.
The film is rather dark; sometimes humorous, sometimes outright creepy and almost certainly incongruous with the values most of the Western world hold in 2010. None of this bothered me, of course. What did bother me was that the film was rather predictable, although I give credit for at least this: many of the subtexts were established with lingering looks and gestures, rather than the kind of extraneous exposition that characterizes plot advancement in a lot of contemporary film. I'm inclined to put this in my "Average" list, all things considered, because I feel like I've seen this story before and didn't find anything new with this version.
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Marcello Mastroianni is great in more of a comedic role. He plays Ferdinando, a man who is tired of his wife, and longs to be with his beautiful young cousin, Angela. Divorce is not an option, so he decides to kill her. If he can set her up to commit adultery, he can claim the murder was a crime of passion and defending of his honor; The jail sentence would be quite short.
It's a fun plot and it's really well executed. I haven't seen too many Italian films from this period, but the ones I have seen have been quite good. Well made films with a lot of heart and emotion