Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.
Since divorce was prohibited in Italy in the 1960's, divorce Italian style meant bumping off your spouse. One of the most practical ways to go about that was to catch him or her in the act of carnal relations with another, since Italian culture virtually demanded that you kill your spouse, under such circumstances, to preserve your family's honor. You could typically count on getting no more than 3-7 years in jail and, if you were lucky, you'd get that reduced by one of the frequent general amnesties. The idea to make a comedy out of such gruesome ideas was the brainchild of director Pietro Germi.
Historical Background: Pietro Germi (1914-1974) was born in Colombo, Liguria, Italy and grew up in a lower-middle-class family. He studied acting and directing at Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, supporting himself during his school years with bit parts and assistant director positions. He made his debut film as a director, Il Testimone, in 1945, during the rise of the neorealist school of filmmaking in Italy, and most of his early films were social commentaries in that vein. He made his real mark, however, when he made the shift to satirical comedies, though even his comedies typically had sociologic and moral overtones. He scored an international success with Divorce Italian Style, which won an Academy Award for best film script, beating out such stellar competition as Last Year at Marienbad and Through a Glass Darkly. He had additional successes in the comic vein with Seduced and Abandoned (1963) and The Birds, the Bees, and the Italians (1966), which shared the 1966 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival with A Man and a Woman. Germi died at just sixty years of age from hepatitis.
The Story: The story takes place in the Sicilian town of Agramonte, where, we are told, the population is 18,000, of which 4300 are illiterate and 1700 unemployed, but where twenty-four Catholic churches can be found. Our protagonist, who doubles as narrator, is Baron Ferdinando Cefalù, scion of an old and respected aristocratic family. His father, Don Gaetano Cefalù (Odoardo Spadaro), has squandered away such a large part of the family fortune that they are now reduced to living in one wing of the old family mansion. Uncle Don Calagero (Ugo Torrente), a former butcher, lives with his family in the rest of the building.
Ferdinando shares the family's quarters with his wife, Rosalia (Daniela Rocca), his father and mother (Bianca Castagnetta), his unmarried sister, Agnese (Angela Cardile), who is engaged to the undertaker's son, Rosario Mulé (Lando Buzzanca), and the maid, Sisina (Margherita Girelli). One bit of the film's funny business is that Ferdinando repeatedly walks in on his sister and her fiancé making out, whereupon Rosario is at great pains to ensure Ferdinando (who couldn't care less) that he will be marrying Agnese very soon.
In the other wing of the house, Don Calagero lives with his wife, Digitta (the sister of Don Gaetano), and a strikingly gorgeous sixteen year-old daughter, Angela (Stefania Sandrelli). She attends teachers' college at a convent in Catania. Ferdinando, at age thirty-seven, is weary with his wife and her smothering love and her demands that he show her, each night in bed, how much he really loves her. He pleads headaches. Rosalia is no longer especially attractive and when she's not suffocating her husband, she's cranky and demanding. Ferdinando finds his gaze drawn inexorably to the lovely and innocent Angela. He also finds himself fantasizing about his wife disappearing into a vat of boiling soap or sinking into quicksand.
At the beach one day, while Rosalia lies buried up to her neck in the sand, Ferdinando encounters Angela alone, picking flowers, in the marshes behind the dunes. She gives him just enough encouragement to push his hormones into overdrive. Later, poor Angela is beaten by her father, when he discovers an entry in her diary that reads, "Today it finally happened. We were surrounded by flowers. We met and, oh, it was too beautiful for words! Now, I am his . . . .his forever." Don Calagero demands to know the man's name, but Angela refuses to divulge it. A midwife is called to examine Angela to determine if her virtue remains intact. It is.
When Angela is returned to school, under the guard of two nuns, Ferdinando begins in earnest to plot how he might become free of Rosalia so that he can marry Angela. Ferdinando reads in the papers about a sensational trial in which a woman had shot her lover to death. The victim had made the mistake of giving his lover a gun and declaring, "If I ever betray you, kill me with this gun." He had and she did. Ferdinando finds the relevant section in a law book, to acquaint himself with the specifics: "Whoever kills a wife caught in the act of illicit carnal relations, while in a furious state over the dishonor to his family, shall serve 3-7 years in jail." He does the arithmetic and determines that, at worst, he'd be forty-four and Angela twenty-three if he served a seven year sentence.
The problem, however, is that Rosalia has no lover and has, thus far, been entirely faithful to him. Who can he manipulate into becoming his wife's lover? Ferdinando buys his wife a sexy new dress and parades her up and down the street and to the opera, looking for likely candidates. He almost settles on Tonino Gambacurta, a singer, until Rosalia informs him exactly why Tonino sings with the voice of a soprano. No, he won't do.
One morning, awakening to the peals of church bells, Ferdinando spots a man in the street and recognizes him as Carmelo (Leopoldo Trieste), a man who was once obsessed with love for Rosalia. Rosalia recognizes him as well and is soon sneaking up to her hope chest, in the attic, to reread the old love letters Carmelo had sent her in former days. Ferdinando learns that Carmelo is a painter, who does restoration work at the church. He hires him, ostensibly to restore some of the artwork of the Cefalù mansion, but with the real intent of promoting an illicit affair between the hapless man and Rosalia. In order to monitor developments, he rigs a listening device in the room where Carmelo will be working.
Well, that's the setup. For the rest, you'll need to watch the film. Suffice it to say that the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry. There's the maid to contend with when she develops an interest of her own in the painter. Still, Ferdinando manages to manipulate the entire town into virtually demanding that he restore his family's honor by murdering his wife. There're a couple of smart twists as the story approaches its denouement.
Themes: This film offers the best in satire, with both humor and bite. Ferdinando's meticulous planning and the various obstacles that arise are a hoot, as are the clever twists. At the same time, Germi deftly slices away at the hypocrisy of Italian morality, where, for example, divorce is prohibited but murder in the name of honor is a virtual obligation. The priests decry the moral degeneracy of films like La Dolce Vita while the patriarchal system that the church helps maintain destroys the lives of many of the Italian women.
Production Values: Germi co-scripted this film along with Ennio De Concini and Alfredo Giannetti. The story is maintained at a brisk pace, with lots of movement and lively dialog. Although the plot is ridiculous on the surface, the story is so cunningly crafted that we accept the droll premise of a man plotting to bump off his wife in order to marry his lovely teenage cousin. The Sicilian atmosphere is laid on thickly and several of the characters, including some of the minor ones, are nicely drawn. Although the script panders to stereotypes of Italians to an extent, it does so with enough compassion and humor as to be inoffensive. The Italians themselves adored the film when it was initially released.
The black-and-white cinematography of Leonida Barboni and Carlo di Palmi beautifully complements some exceptional set design (by Sergio Canevari) and production design (by Carlo Egidi). The atmosphere is darker and more brooding than is typical for a comedy, especially in the interiors of the Cefalù mansion. This is, after all, black comedy. The fine cinematography is graced with a pristine restoration for the Criterion Edition DVD. The background music is lyrical and wistful and very Sicilian in its style and the mood it evokes.
Marcello Mastroianni ranks as one of the greatest Italian actors ever, having appeared in many of the most important Italian films of his generation. In the midst of the current film, nearly all of the townspeople attend the opening of the controversial film La Dolce Vita, despite it being vociferously denounced by the priests. In a bit of irony, Mastroianni also stars in that film, though the scenes shown include none of those in which he appeared. Mastroianni's lists of credits include notably La Dolce Vita (1960), La Notte (1961), Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (1963), 8 ½ (1963), The Stranger (1967), City of Women (1980), La Nuit de Varennes (1982), and Dark Eyes (1987). Though mostly known for dramatic roles, Mastroianni reveals a deft comedic touch, wearing his frustration with his life and marriage through heavy lids and a timeless hangdog expression. He scratches himself repeatedly and constantly preens his slicked-back black hair. He's so elegant and suave that we forget that this is a man plotting relentlessly to murder his loving but suffocating wife. Only Mastroianni could make sympathetic a man engaged in detailed premeditation of murder.
Mastroianni gets able supporting performances from the two female costars, Daniela Rocca, as the wife Rosalia, and Stefania Sandrelli, as the gorgeous young heartthrob cousin, Angela. Sandrelli later appeared in such films as The Conformist (1970), The Family (1987), and Stealing Beauty (1996). There's also a slew of high quality character performances among those playing the various relatives and townspeople, especially from Pietro Tordi, who plays the melodramatic attorney.
Bottom-Line: You can find this film is either VHS or DVD. If fact, there are two DVD options. There's an older version from Hen's Tooth Video which is mediocre and has burned-in subtitles. Then, there's the pricier two disc edition from Criterion that features a pristine restoration, optional subtitles, anamorphic transfer at the original theatrical ratio of 1.85:1, and a host of high quality extras. One entire disc is taken up with the extras, which include a forty-minute documentary ("The Man with a Cigar in His Mouth") which provides a portrait of director Pietro Germi, a thirty-minute set of interview segments with some of the film's actors (including Stefania Sandrelli and Lando Buzzanca), an interview with screenwriter Ennio De Concini, and screen-test footage for both Stefania Sandrelli and Daniela Rocca. There's also a nifty 27-page booklet with three essays, including one by Martin Scorsese. The film is 107-minutes long and is in Italian with English subtitles.
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Satire DVD - To fully appreciate the international box-office bonanza Divorce, Italian Style (Divorzio All'Italiana), one must remember that back in 1...More at Barnes and Noble
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