Ah, that scene where the baron Ferdinando Cefalù, alias Marcello Mastroianni strangles Rosalia, “his” wife, Daniela Rocca, who snores like a ringer! The guy is attracted by the beautiful eyes of his cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli, 16 years old at the time) and would leave once and for all to his wife, no sweetheart. The look of the beautiful Angela, her generous curves would melt any male, the actress has won the beauty contest ” Miss Cinema of his native city, Viareggio “14 and a half years”. But Ferdinando did not know how to regain his freedom.
The film by Pietro Germi rewarded by the oscar for the best screenplay in 1962 (signed Alfredo Giannetti and Ennio De Concini) including the restored version of “4K” will be released this may 15, is a nice support against the ban on divorce, which did not exist in Italy in those years. Originally, the filmmaker had come up with Murder at the Italian in 1959 and who had not yet received the palme d’or ex-eaquo with Claude Lelouch ( a man and A woman ) for These ladies and gentlemen (Signore & signori) in 1966 did not think people loosen up as much of the public.
“We realized that it was not possible to avoid that the elements are frankly comical take on the dramatic elements, so we came naturally the idea to choose a tone of the grotesque, which is really the only possible one for these incredible stories of crimes of honour: it is sad that they bear the grief and the blood, but everything else, the thoughts, the acts, the facts which surround and form the bottom of the crime, we do not know whether it is ridiculous or stupidity that characterize the better,” said his friend Mario Monicelli ( Cinema 62 n°66 , 1962).
Comedy Italian style
Also, the viewer he laughs a full-throated front of a Marcello Mastroianni, looking haggard, disheveled, angry, back, scruffy and tie loose. Forcing yourself to be friendly with a woman that he can no longer see in the painting. To get “rid” of the entrenched Rosalia, he found an article of the law stipulating that it had to be the surprise in a situation of adultery. He would then have the “right” to avenge his honor in the… assassinating. The aristocrat part in the hunt for a guinea pig.
It must be said, nowhere near as attractive as Anita Ekberg ( La Dolce Vita with the same Mastroianni is on display in the fiction). Daniela Rocca who is not afraid of self-deprecating humor does not deprive effects to burlesque everything goes. The insolent Pietro Germi book a film is amoral, without illusions about human nature and men in particular. A jewel in the genre of “comedy Italian style”.
