Sorrentino, "The Great Beauty", 2013
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Divorce Italian Style
Pietro Germi's Divorce Italian Style was a very interesting and entertaining movie from a comedic standpoint. There were definitely stark contrasts in Italian humor in cinema in the early 1960s from humor in American cinema during the same time period. One of the main differences I found was the open sexuality of the film. Germi is consistently including references to sexuality and using it as the punchline for many of the film's ongoing jokes (for example, Rosario and his fiancé constantly being walked in on by Ferdinando who doesn't seem to care). The ending of the movie was also not typical of early American humor; the end isn't exactly happy, it was more clever and cunning and seemed to imply that the cycle of infidelity and over the top romance never ends. Finally, the style of humor was a lot darker than was American humor from the same period; the whole movie and many of the punchlines are centered around Ferdinando's desire to kill his wife.
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Hey John, I agree with what you said about the contrast of American and Italian comedy and how the Italian comedies of the time focused a lot more on sexual humor. I love the witty ending of the film and how it continues the trends of promiscuity that drive the storyline. There is a dark overtone to the movie in that no one questions Ferdinando's motives in murdering his wife or wishing to be with his cousin. (Why Ferdinando doesn't question this either still amazes me.) This film was apt for the genre and time period, and I enjoyed following the paths it took.
ReplyDeleteThis is a grear point and exactly how I felt/ what I was thinking while watching this film. It took me a few scenes in the beginning to get used to the kind of dark humor used in “Divorce Italian Style” and once I caught on to the particilar sense of humor, I was able to truly appreciate this film and the meaning behind it. Although it was hard to look past the insestual desires of Ferdinando at the start of the film (simply because it is something so foreign and out of the ordinary to me), eventually the film began to help me understand the humor and ideas presented at this time in Italian history. I thought the film had a fantastic storyline using irony and dranatic comedy as its backbone.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kara Schindler’s response concerning censorship and think that the movie criticizes a law that is outdated in an indirect way using comedy which implies perhaps an inability to directly criticize the law. However, I believe that despite these ideas about censorship as a way of explaining the indirect message on the divorce law, I find another reason for the indirect critical approach. I believe that Divorce Italian Style may be indirectly criticizing divorce laws because this movie is trying to experiment with ways of conveying political significance in the art of cinema. This movie would otherwise be a documentary if it was protesting divorce law. Instead this is a work of cinema because it conveys a similar message by taking creative approaches in comedy and cinematography.
ReplyDeleteThe movie’s beginning scene indicates a religious significance and the cultural setting indicates a representational dynamic of choosing to juxtapose the domestic and foreign with concepts of good morals in the embodiment of Christ and the “bad” moral elements of a exotic bar scene. There is a sense that beauty, wealth, and physicality is not revealing of what is truly behind the scenes. There is a great emphasis on the popularity of the celebrity and the craziness of the crowds emphasized with music and sound choices to hear the commotion and angles of the photographers which give the impression that they are quite close to the viewer. There is sense that she is acting her role as much off-screen as on-screen. Reference to stereotypical Italian food. A movie about a movie enables the director to critic his art while making his art. This enables the film to be perceived as “real” since it is depicting what appears to be “fake” . Her “wild” persona is replicated in her calling to the wolves. “we” is that Marcell and Slyvia or “we” as in Marcello’s good and bad side. The music creates a fantastical mood, that this is all perhaps a dream. There is a archetypal dynamic set-up with the bad, violent boyfriend and the sensitive, caring one. The collaboration of people to portray “real” and “fake” in media. It doesn’t matter if things are real or fake, the celebration is in supernatural elements. The movie is a celebration of art form and the intellectual reason for exploring as an artist. The perceptions and inspirational perspective seem to situate the viewer into an authentic experience and yet it is perhaps the effortless transition between dreams and reality, between portrayals and imitations of real and creation which makes this piece of film a masterpiece of art as well as a testament to the history of the artform and culture.
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