Divorce, Italian Style

I conclude my look at the prominent films of 1962 with Divorce, Italian Style, a 1961 film from Italy that was released in the U.S. in 1962, and received Oscar nominations for its director (Pietro Germi), star (Marcello Mastroianni), and won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. It's a delightful black comedy about the presumably universal fantasy of killing one's wife.

Mastroianni plays an aristocrat from a small town in Sicily ("Agromonte," he tells us in voiceover, "is a town of 18,000, 4,000 of them illiterate. There are also 24 churches.") When we first see him he is arriving there by train, his hair slicked back, wearing sunglasses, a cigarette holder in his lips. In flashback, we learn that he is married to the mule-faced, uni-browed Rosalia (Daniel Rocca), and can barely stand her.

His father has gambled away much of the family's fortune, so they are forced to share their mansion with his mother's sister's family, including their sixteen-year-old daughter (Stefania Sandrelli). Mastroianni falls in love with her, and since divorce is strictly forbidden in Italy at that time, he tries to figure how to get rid of his wife.

A sensational trial gives him an idea. A woman killed her lover to protect her honor. According to Italian law, this is treated differently that a regular murder, and the sentence is lenient. Mastroianni then conspires to make his wife have an affair so he can shoot her.

It seems she had a boyfriend who was thought to be lost in World War II. When he returns, he pushes the two together, figuring he can serve a few years in prison and Sandrelli will wait for him.

The plotting is carried out in the darkest of humors, but very drolly, so we really can't hate Mastroianni for what is he doing, even though he is going to kill an innocent woman so he can marry his teenage, virginal first cousin who is twenty years younger than himself. The film is directed by Germi with a distinctly Italian style, complete with mandolins on the soundtrack. And, of course, we expect the other shoe to drop on Mastroianni--certainly he can't get what he wants. Eventually the shoe does drop in the last shot, but it is not a shoe, it's a bare foot.

Movie lovers will also get a kick out of the portion of the story when La Dolce Vita plays a big part. The film comes to town, and even though the priest condemns it, it draws big crowds to see just how salacious it is. Of course, Mastroianni starred in that film, but we don't see him, just Anita Ekberg dancing in the Trevi Fountain, which must have been quite the site for a simple Sicilian in 1960.