DVD Watch

Divorce Italian Style

Criterion, $39.95

With loyalty to such cinematic emperors as Fellini, Pasolini, and Antonioni, the Criterion Collection's devotion to post-war Italian masterpieces is serious business. Seriously buffo, comico, spiritoso in the case of neo-realist Pietro Germi's Divorzio all'Italiana (1962). A companion to Criterion's Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), Mario Monicelli's eternally endearing caper film farce, this Best Original Screenplay Oscar winner laughed all the way to the international bank on the beautiful poker face (and timing) of Marcello Mastroianni. With gigolo eyes for his nubile first cousin (Stefania Sandrelli), Baron Ferdinand Cefalù – Fefè – must first rid himself of the unibrow-and-moustache sharing his bed for the past 15 years (Daniela Rocca). Like Preston Sturges' Unfaithfully Yours, a June Criterion release, the Barone's murderous daydreams accelerate the comedic pace until you, too, know how to mutter strumpet (sgualdrina) and cuckold (cornuto) in Italian. Screenwriter Ennio Concini, in a second disc of supplements, affirms that the statute the Baron discovers, wherein crimes of passion could be plea-bargained under the sanctity of marriage, did in fact exist. "The Man With a Cigar in His Mouth," a 40-minute documentary on Germi, chisels the taciturn actor/director's name into the marble of Italian legend with testaments ("He invented an almost Joycean type of interior monologue") and with comparisons to Billy Wilder, who considered Germi a genius. Having established his meticulous art with early social dramas like Four Ways Out (1950) and The Railroad Man (1956), it was Germi's latter comedies, Divorce, Seduced and Abandoned (1964), and The Birds, the Bees, and the Italians (1966) that made him world-renowned. "None of us really thought Germi had a sense of humor," marvels one colleague. "He could've been carved all of one piece, with a hatchet."

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