A 37-year-old, Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni), wants to be with his 16-year-old niece Angela (Stefania Sandrelli). Unfortunately, Ferdinando is married and divorce is illegal, so he decides to trick his wife Rosalia (Daniela Rocca) into having an affair so he can murder her and claim it was a crime of passion.
That’s the plot. But since Angela looks sorta like Taylor Swift, how about we run through it again, this time only using lyrics from TS songs?
Ferdinando knows it’s long gone with Rosalia and that magic’s not here no more. Is it chill that Angela’s in his head? (Don’t you think nineteen’s too young?) He screams, for whatever it’s worth, “I love you,” ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard?
He wakes up screaming from dreaming, one day he’ll watch as Rosalia’s leaving. She’s acting different and it smells like infidelity. He knew you were trouble when you walked in.
Look what you made him do. Look what you made him do. They are never ever ever getting back together. Got a long list of ex-lovers, they’ll tell you he’s insane, but he’s got a blank space, baby, and he’ll write your name.
Rating: 4/10. You can tell me when it’s over if watching this movie was worth the pain.
Cast and Crew
Marcello Mastroianni is the first person to receive a Best Actor nod for a non-English performance.1 Besides his multiple Oscar nominations, he’s probably best known for his collaborations with Sophia Loren2 (eight of ‘em) and with Federico Fellini (including playing the lead in La Dolce Vita3 and 8 1/2). In fact, our bears for the 1960 Wrap-Up explicitly reference the scene where Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg splash around in the Trevi Fountain:
(If you don’t look at the bears by clicking through to our homepage, you should. It’s pretty much the only thing we do in this newsletter that people like.)
Here are three dudes you probably didn’t expect us to group together: Marcello Mastroianni, Jack Lemmon, and Dean Stockwell (remember, we saw him in Sons and Lovers). These three are the only men to win multiple Best Actor awards at Cannes.4
Taylor Swift is a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter known for her deeply personal, narrative-driven lyrics and her transition from country to pop music.
The Trivia
The Italian title of this film, Divorzio all’italiana, inspired the name of its film genre: “commedia all’italiana,” comedy Italian style.5 In some sense, it was a reaction to the Italian Neorealist movement: both critiqued society, but commedia all’italiana used humor and satire to provide the message.
We talked a bit about Italian Neorealism (1943-1954) when discussing Wild Is the Wind, since the star of that film, Anna Magnani, also starred in Roberto Rossellini’s film Rome, Open City (1945). That one was about the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Rome. That was sorta the deal with Neorealism: they were “issue films” focused on the lives of the poor and working class. Besides Rossellini, you should know Vittorio De Sica and his film Bicycle Thieves (1948), about a guy searching for his stolen bicycle.6 There’s more films in this genre, of course, but we’re not here to help you cram for your college Italian film final.
Italian Neorealism is sort of a limited term, though, and Italian cinema outgrew it in the ‘50s and ‘60s. I’ve seen some films of this period described as “art house” or “auteur” cinema, with abstract storytelling, existential themes, and complex narratives. Fellini’s work falls into this category. Another director to know here is Michelangelo Antonioni, especially for his English-language film Blow-Up (1966).7 That’s about a photographer who captures a murder in one of his photos.
But there’s also fun Italian cinema! Take Spaghetti Westerns8: Western films produced and directed by Italians. You should know Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name Trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For A Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). That nameless man is played by Clint Eastwood.9 You should also know Ennio Morricone, the composer for those films (and many others). His “wheowheowhoa” piece from TGtB&tU is iconic.
Meaning “yellow” in Italian, giallo is a genre of horror thrillers, often containing gruesome murders.10 Wikipedia says “the archetypal giallo plot involves a mysterious, black-gloved psychopathic killer who stalks and butchers a series of beautiful women.” Good genre! Dario Argento, the main figure in giallo and referred to as the “master of horror,” is known for Suspiria (1977), about a dance studio that’s actually a coven of witches. Argento often worked with the prog-rock band Goblin.
Odds and Ends
Daniela Rocca was given a mustache, unibrow, and moles aplenty to play smothering wife Rosalia…cuckolds are said to “wear the horns”…Carmelo (Leopoldo Trieste), whom Rosalia runs off with, fought in El Alamein during WWII; we discussed that front in a previous Trivia section…tempera is an old-school painting technique where pigments are mixed with a binder (usually egg yolk)… an odalisque, or “harem girl,” is a concubine in a seraglio.
Ah, here’s some good trivia! I got bored watching Divorce Italian Style and, midway through, switched over to the last ten minutes of The Natural (1984), where Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) breaks Wonderboy but still hits a climactic home run with the Savoy Special. This is seriously the most important part of today’s newsletter.
The first winner for a non-English role was Jane Wyman, who only used American Sign Language in Johnny Belinda (1948). The first spoken-language non-English winner was Sophia Loren for Two Women (1960). Hold that thought about Sophia Loren.
One of those pair-ups was Marriage Italian Style (1964), though that film isn’t connected to Divorce Italian Style.
As a winking reference, in Divorce Italian Style, the characters go to see La Dolce Vita. It’s described thusly: “Orgies worthy of Tiberius! Wife-swapping! Striptease! Let’s go guys!”
The “Big Three” international film festivals are Cannes, Berlin, and Venice. If you want to make it the “Big Five,” add in Sundance and Toronto.
Though there already were films of this type. Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) is considered the first of the genre. Pietro Germi, who directed Divorce Italian Style, was big in this genre, as was Ettore Scola, known for We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974).
I’m sure it’s about more than that, since it’s considered one of the greatest films of all time while a similar-sounding film, Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000) doesn’t receive nearly as much acclaim.
Also L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L’Eclisse (1962), if you’re getting your MA in Italian Cinema.
A genre which lends its name to one of my favorite Primus songs.
Leone also did the Once Upon a Time films: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, another Spaghetti Western), Duck, You Sucker! (1971) (also called Once Upon a Time...the Revolution) and Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
Why yellow? There used to be crime-mystery pulp novels with yellow covers, so giallo turned into a synonym for a mystery novel. This carried over as these novels were adapted to the screen.