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Pietro Germi
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Pietro Germi's last completed picture was this Italian sex comedy starring, of all people, Dustin Hoffman, here at the peak of his Hollywood stardom (the film was made between Straw Dogs and Papillon). Hoffman is unfortunate Alfred, a timid bank clerk trapped in an unwise marriage with insatiable, overbearing Mariarosa (The Conformist's Stefania Sandrelli). Her sexual demands leave Alfredo exhausted, but when he takes up with Carolina (Carla Gravina), who is more his speed, it is Italy's strict divorce laws that will not give him any peace. Alfredo Alfredo is something of an update, ten years on, of Divorce Italian Style, Germi's 1961 hit, although its misogynist humour remains mired in "a pre-women's liberation era" (Variety, 1973). Hoffman is said to have diligently learned his lines in Italian, only to have Germi shoot the part in English and post-dub it into Italian with another's voice. and the novelty of seeing him without his own frightened, chocked-up voice adds an extra dimension to this Pietro Germi comedy" (Pauline Kael).
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Pietro Germi's energetic, evocatively photographed 1964 follow-up to his "Divorce, Italian Style" is another Sicily-set farce lampooning unjust Italian laws of the time -- in this case, the ludicrous statute allowing a rapist to avoid punishment simply by marrying his victim. Sixteen-year-old Agnese (luminous Stefania Sandrelli) is overcome by the amorous advances of her sister's weasel of a fiance, Peppino. The act, as well as Agnese's subsequent pregnancy, is exposed and her father, Don Vincenzo (blustery, brilliant Saro Urzi), is enraged, mostly at Agnese for, in his view, compromising his family's honor. With disregard for his daughters and his own health, Don Vincenzo hatches a frenzied plot to hitch Agnese to Peppino -- to the former's horror -- while, crucially, protecting the Don's reputation.
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Andrea Marcocci (Pietro Germi) has drinking problem which slowly starts to tear apart his family. One day he loses his job a railroad man when he accidentally hits a man on the tracks and later that same day he makes as second mistake when he misses a light nearly causes his train to crash into another train. Knowing nothing but the railroad and wanting desperately to get his old job back. He crosses the line when his former co-workers go on strike. His friends all turn their back on him for working as a scab and this shame only further pushed him into a deeper alcoholic abyss.
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This early entry in the oeuvre of Pietro Germi (DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE, SEDUCED AND ABANDONED) exhibits a humanism and an interest in the small tragedies of everyday life. Very popular with audiences during his time though reviled by critics, Germi was a social democrat in a staunchly Marxist milieu, focusing his efforts on capturing the existential mood of post-WWII Italy as well as the universal concerns of the common man. Germi himself stars here as Andrea, a crack railroad engineer in his 50s who has ... far lived the good life. When he comes down with a mysterious disease, however, he begins a downward spiral, accruing ills until it's too much for him to bear. His son prefers petty crime to a decent job, and his daughter (Sylvia Koscina) resents him for forcing her to marry a clerk; she delivers a stillborn child and finds solace in the arms of a man not her husband.
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Pietro Germi's 99 minute mafia western feels like a 3 hour movie. The reason is that he accomplishes so much in those 99 minutes that the result is short of miraculous. Within this time, Germi effectively creates the mood and atmosphere of a boundless sun-flattened village in Sicily while telling the story of an idealistic magistrate who must not succumb to the mafia overseers. Included in all this is a poor vs rich and the classic right vs wrong struggle, a love sacrifice and a Romeo and Juliet romance. But the marvel comes at the 94 minute film mark when the magistrates resigns and leaves the village. Just as you thought all is lost, Germi literally pulls the carpet from under your feet with a wonderful plot twist that would leave you spellbound.
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The vita is far from dolce in Seduced and Abandoned, Pietro Germi's bitter comedy skewering Italy's moral values in the 1960s. Sicilian petty tyrant Don Vincenzo Ascalante (Saro Urzì, who looks like a mustached Antonin Scalia) exercises a brutal control over his family. So when 16-year-old Agnese (Stefania Sandrelli) gets pregnant by her sister's fiancée, papa erupts like Mount Etna. Don Vincenzo's obsessions with virginity and family honor propel him from threats and blackmail to a murder plot and a forced marriage. Germi bites his thumb at parents, gossips, priests and lawyers, all complicit in the double standard: ''It's a man's right to ask, a woman's duty to refuse.''
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