Divorzio all’italiana (Divorce, Italian Style). 1961. Italy. Directed by Pietro Germi. Screenplay by Alfredo Giannetti, Ennio De Concini, Germi. With Marcello Mastroianni, Daniela Rocca, Stefania Sandrelli, Leopoldo Trieste. In Italian; English subtitles. 35mm. 104 min.
In this darkly cynical comedy of manners, a tremendous hit on both sides of the Atlantic, Pietro Germi, Marcello Mastroianni, and Stefania Sandrelli take an oldie but goodie—a wayward husband schemes to do in his wife—and turn it into a sly rebuke of Catholic Italy’s oppressive marriage laws. Mastroianni, as the reprobate Sicilian aristocrat (he of comic indignation and wandering eye), had by now perfected this sort of irresistibly self-delusional role, to the point where the film could winkingly quote La dolce vita. Describing Germi’s first comedy as “a perfect movie,” Stuart Klawans observes, “I can think of no previous Italian movie that had invited the audience to participate in a murder and laugh about it. The closest antecedents may be American and British: Unfaithfully Yours and Kind Hearts and Coronets. Very different passions rule those pictures, though.”