OLD ACADEMY ANEW – Divorce Italian Style (1961)
Hollywood is a mythical place. Sometimes I think it’s more a state of mind than an actual geographical point on this blue marble. Nevertheless, what comes from that fabled H transports us to other times, places, ideas, and/or feelings that aren’t necessarily ours but resonate within.
Hollywood’s last ten years or so have been a nightmarish rehash of old ideas, reboots, and frankly a lack of creativity. With all the technological resources at its disposal, Big H relies on the hackneyed instead of searching for new stories from unconventional sources. Here is where I’m going to stop knocking New Hollywood and turn to Old Hollywood for solace (and some smacking around too, why the heck no?).
Therefore, the intent is to review/ponder last-century Oscar-nominated movies through the lens of today’s society. Beware, only movies nominated to the Best Picture category (rather not deal with costume design or scores or directors), but not the year’s winner. Also, we might give special focus to foreign movies or those which take place somewhere other than the United States of America.
Let’s start with our first victim, I mean, subject.
“Picture it. Sicily. The 1960s. An Italian man kills his wife to be with his beautiful 16-year-old cousin.”
No. This is not an episode of the Golden Girls. Neither a Florida News Headline (pretty sure you could find some Sicily something around the Sunshine State, though). Also, not a 60 seconds Tik Tok trying to misguide you with information without context.
Nonetheless, in this age of cancellation and lack of reading comprehension, context (if available) is everything.
CONTEXT
In heavily Catholic Italy, you couldn’t get legally divorced until early 1970. So, our protagonist, Ferdinando “Fefé” Cefalú (Marcello Mastroianni), needs to find a different way to get rid of his wife, Rosalinda (Daniela Roca). The question of whether is wrong to be in love with your 16-year-old first cousin when you’re a thirty-something married aristocrat never seems to cross our hero’s mind.
Moving to the Bible Belt made me aware of this un-Latin-American nomenclature. Where I come from we’re just “cousins,” and let’s not get tangled in the mechanisms of the “removed” label on them gosh darn southern family trees.
Daughter of Fefe’s paternal aunt and still-in-high school, Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), returns for the summer to the dilapidated Cefalú Palace, situated smack-dab in the languid Sicilian city of Agramonte. Beyond the age difference that would make their interactions already awkward, the family is divided by pride and means. The baron (Fefe’s father) hates Angela’s plebeian father because the man solved his debts and in the process adjudicated their best lands to his side of the family. The living arrangements are strenuous, to say the least— with each clan commanding opposite wings of the palace.
Fefé has been married to Rosalinda for twelve years. We are never clear if he wants her to disappear because he’s done with her clingy ways or because he’s focused on Angela. It does feel like “the chicken or the egg causality dilemma,” but here we are— in all its Italian black and white glory, and we’re gonna roll with it.
The highly publicized case of a woman murdering her man after she found him cheating gives Fefé a way out.
Mind you, the murdered man wasn’t her husband but they cohabited. He even gave her the murder weapon “in case he ever cheated on her.” The woman is obviously convicted, but her sentence is greatly reduced because she was defending her honor; honor the man had been sullying by keeping her as a concubine (her lawyer’s words, not mine) refusing to give her the moral and sacred status of wife. The histrionics of her lawyer during the trial and voice-overs throughout the movie leave Perry Mason and all the prosecutors of Law & Order looking like “Tree Number Four” in any elementary school theatrical production.
If that obscure downtrodden uneducated woman could get a lesser sentence, why the F-U-C-K a man, and not just any man, but an aristocrat like Fefé, could not get an even better deal?
Once again, context. This is macho Italy; the only woman sacred to a man is his mother. Any other: sister, wife, or daughter is basically property (why does that sound familiar?). Even their Penal Code states a sentence of three to seven years of jail time if a man finds any of those three in an illicit carnal act… and dispatches them to avenge his and their family’s honor.
How convenient to have a Penal Code in your dilapidated palace library.
Dang. Still, I’m here wondering what the sentence would be when the mother is the one engaging in dishonoring atrocities… Internet search? Nah. Surely their laws have evolved with the rest of the super woke and lovely humanity, right? Right?
But, wait a minute, since we’re talking context. What about Angela? We have been in Fefé’s aristocratic mind the whole time. Do we even know if she likes him too? Is this just a cousin-old-enough-to-be-actually-your-uncle lecherous intent?
It is not.
She has her lovely 16-year-old eyes on him too.
Dun Dun Dun.
COMEDY
Fefé Cefalú is our narrator. We receive the story from his perspective. We immediately learn so many things about him when he describes his hometown like this: Agramonte. 18,000 souls. 4,300 of them, illiterate. 1,700 partially or fully unemployed. 24 churches.
We know this man, we have seen this man, we deal with men like him every day through the media (and sometimes in real life).
Even if they aren’t technically aristocrats anymore, they have enough money/power to think they are somehow royalty in this world of alleged equality for all. And, just like Fefé, they are jokes. At least we only have to deal with Fefé for the 105 minutes of the movie. His quirks and affectations are funny because they are ridiculous— from the pseudo-romantic style of narration to the tsk he does whenever things don’t go his way.
Rosalinda is the clingy wife so intent on keeping the romance aflame that she’s frankly annoying. Every night, when Fefé comes home from the (all male) social club, she tries to entice him to do, you know, adult things, in the clumsiest ways possible. Now trust me, her sickly-sweet attentions are not reserved just for the bedroom. I watched this movie thrice for research purposes. The third time, I took a shot of rum every time Rosalinda whined “Fefé…” and whenever Fefé tsked— two things that never happened in the same frame.
Needless to say, I was really happy by the end of view número tres.
A funeral home’s heir is the suitor of Fefé’s sister. Even though Fefé’s father is still alive, this man always tries to waylay Fefé to talk about the marriage arrangements, but I feel it is to distract Fefé every time he finds the gravedigger’s son (the words of Fefé’s dad, not mine) and his sister in the middle of a make-out session in some dark corner of the palace.
The Communist Party was becoming a major player in Europe after WWII, and director Pietro Germi in his own stealthily subversive way shows us the status quo of an Italy still recuperating from the fascist era. The contrast between the conservative part of the community: at church, listening to the priest rambling about morality and sin; versus the communists’ followers: engaged in a party, dancing to rock and roll music.
Funnily enough, the communist affair is a male-only shindig.
My gay sensibilities were tickled to no end because I was transported for a moment to that scene of Victor/Victoria (1982) at the gay dance room. I just don’t know why.
As you noticed, the male-only situation is not just at the Communist Party. Fefé’s social club is a place where women are discussed at length to either exalt or disparage, depending on their attributes. In this movie, every woman that is not considered an object of desire has a unibrow and dark hair. So you can imagine how poor Rosalinda looks after twelve years of marriage.
Since we’re talking objects of desire, let’s go back to cousin Angela.
Her screen time is limited, very limited when you think about it. The first time we see her is at church (duh). Next time she’s sleeping in her bedroom. Fefé is on the opposite wing watching her from a bathroom window. In this idyllically cringy moment, the moon is full, the wind blows, and Fefé stares in Romeo-esque wistfulness. The magical moment shatters when Fefé’s father bangs on the door wanting to use the bathroom. Fefé reluctantly leaves his romantic post only to be replaced by his father, who engages the help of opera glasses because, you know, he is old.
We see Angela again several days later, leaving the church with a woman of the house. Fefé observers her from a distance, but their eyes lock, and (unlike other times) she maintains eye contact for more than five seconds. I do not need to explain what those extra seconds of eye contact did to Fefé’s romantic/lusty/cringy imagination.
Still summer on the fabled isle of Sicily; thus, the inhabitants of the Cefalú palace go to the beach, keeping the same distance as in their respective wings. We find Rosalinda buried to her neck in the sand supposedly for her arthritis (I’m pretty sure she’s younger than her husband, so…funny?). Away from her, Fefé looks at his aunt’s group, noticing his adored Angela is not with them.
In search of his angel, Fefé stumbles upon gravedigger’s boy and sister, making out like teenagers among the bushes.
He dismisses their shenanigans and hurries because he knows this is a rare opportunity to be alone with Angela. She’s picking flowers for the Immaculate Conception, as obviously all nubile idealized objects of lust while at the beach do. Fefé concedes, “I feel like picking flowers too. I just wouldn’t know who to give them to.”
I fell off my chair laughing at the third view, but I’m pretty sure it was more the dark rum than the 37-year-old jaded married man acting like a starry-eyed schoolboy.
Fefé asks her if she understands. Angela assents, reclining beside him amid the little trees with the flowers she just collected over her bosom. Fefé insists, “Why did you look at me like that the other day?”
Angela laughs triumphantly, asking, “So you have thought about it, eh?”
I’m gonna let you draw your own conclusions from that tidbit.
Angela’s father yells for her, and she scurries away but not before giving Fefé half her flowers. Fefé returns to his family. He distributes the flowers among the women of his party. Here is when, for the first time, he fantasizes about Rosalinda’s death. Before the end of the second act, these fantasies run from the ancient (stabbed and boiled in a witch’s caldron) to the modern (a rocket explosion comically ushered by a MAN ORBITS EARTH newspaper headline) in several well-accomplished degrees of hilarity.
CONUNDRUM
A few days after the beach, for whatever reason, Angela’s father reads the account of the encounter with a nameless man that sunny day in her diary. He smacks her around. She screams. Her mother screams. The noise attracts the attention of the other wing of the palace, bringing both families together for a most operatic battle. The climax swells, and the affronted father tosses the diary at Fefé, barking, “See the proof of her deception!”
Never mind the silly open-to-interpretation wording of the short paragraph; the only thing that registers for Fefé is the last sentence: Now, I’m his forever.
A midwife is called to verify if Angela remains unsullied. She cries in terror and embarrassment…
That night, the moon is full again, the crickets chirp, the orange trees are in bloom, and Angela cries alone in the palace courtyard. A mandolin ballad plays in the background as Fefé goes to her. The midwife’s verdict is “unspoiled,” but I think the audience is supposed to understand that conclusion is about to be overturned as they embrace, slowly descending to the grass. The camera pans out toward the stupidly big moon, and the music fades…
Fefé’s tear-streaked face as he watches Angela being shipped off in an old-timey bus the next day is epic in its realism and ridiculousness. Now the need for action is tantamount.
Rosalinda needs to die, pronto.
Fefé tries to figure out what man (not of the illiterate or unemployed, of course) could be hoodwinked as a tool for Rosalinda’s demise. He lists them. Too old, too meh, too mafia boss. The best candidate so far turns to be something we never get to know; Rosalinda giggles and whispers something in Fefé’s ear while the man performs an aria with the church’s choir.
Finally we get a tool, I mean suitor, in the form of Carmelo (Leopoldo Trieste), an old flame of Rosalinda’s thought to be dead but miraculously returned from the war some years before. Happy with HIS choice, Fefé goes to the big city to buy a recorder (evidence of the affair, duh) and visit Angela. Untainted catholic school girls marching through the city guarded by sour-faced nuns are used to the most dramatic effect when Fefé finds her. Before he is chased away by the nuns, Angela says she’s sent him a letter.
Confined to the Convent of the Seven Sorrows indeed.
Midmovie. This is where I stop this narration slash rambling of Divorce Italian Style to focus on the review through the 2021 lenses.
CONCLUSION
This movie is sixty years old. Yes. And its social commentary is as real as it was when it came out. Our life is a simple parody of a dark comedy where we still suffer from the same basic (and frankly) ridiculous issues. Religious organizations through their own mouthpieces and/or politicians still try to control what the citizens do in their private and legal lives. Women are still a little more than objects of desire with the only update that men are equally objectified and measured now. Communities still gossip and rejoice their neighbors’ failures now on a global scale thanks (?) to social media.
Agramonte may have had at the time of the movie 4,300 illiterate people, but compared to the millions today unable to comprehend what they read or watch in a few seconds video is nothing. Millions are incapable of investigating even a little to draw logical, well (or at least decent) -balanced conclusions.
I have to bring up Call Me by Your Name (2017) because both movies have an Italian background both in setting and directors.
People were very vocal about the fact that Elio is 17 and Oliver is 24; the same folk unable to do a lousy internet search about the age of consent in Italy. It’s 16, during the time of the movie (the 1980s) and still today; same as in 34 states of the United States of America and a lot of European nations. How about that? So, the real fuss was about the age difference or because it was two guys?
Were the good people of the 1960s equally vocal about a 37-year-old aristocrat in love (tsk) with his 16-year-old cousin? Not even a little. Does that mean that they were more open-minded than us today, or is it because it wasn’t two guys?
Would the “good” people of 2021 be outraged about this movie? Some. Probably the same who sat behind a cartoon character profile picture and use their keyboards as swords to wield an opinion about everything. Other people, those who think it’s okay to be a jerk if you have money/fame/status and are (of course) a man, would say is a cinematographic jewel. Which Divorce Italian Style is, in its own right, but that’s not my point.
This is a subversive movie; a movie made at a time when the only way to be subversive was through comedy.
The age difference is not the joke— just the tip of the summery Italian iceberg. Regardless of geographical location, we all let people get away with things; first, because we think that if they do it we can do it too; second because if they fail we can enjoy a naughty dose of schadenfreude without remorse.
I endorse the “you don’t need to be good to be decent” school of thought. So trust me— I enjoy my schadenfreude (no popcorn necessary).
If you remember, I cut my narration slash rambling of Divorce Italian Style midmovie. Not because I was already two thousand words into it, but because I think this is a movie you need to watch if you haven’t. I know, it’s black and white and it has subtitles, but it’s good for drinking games. When you sober up afterward will make you consider where we (as a whole) are taking humanity.
I’m giving it 8/10. The cringe is real and it needs to be shown.
Cheers.
Divorce Italian Style is currently streaming on HBOMAX.