Skip to main content

Pietro Germi: An Old World Comedy Genius Still Relevant Today

One of the masters of commedia all’Italiana, he had a talent for deconstructing complex behaviors while maintaining his sharp sense of humor.

Born in 1914 in northern Italy but with an affinity for the South, director Pietro Germi emerged as a leading filmmaker toward the end of the neorealist period and was instrumental in creating the commedia all’Italiana genre. What made his films unique was his ability to grapple with the social issues that were dominating Italy at the time, posing questions that needed to be asked, but in a way that was entertaining, clever, funny and visually beautiful.

The 1954 film Mid-Century Loves is a 52-minute gem that contains five short tales of love directed by Pietro Germi, Mario Chiari, Roberto Rossellini, Antonio Pietrangelo and Glauco Pellegrini. Each vignette is a decadent piece of cinematic perfection with richly detailed sets, regional music and spectacular cinematography. Germi’s segment, War 1915-18 follows the struggles of a young wife and soon-to-be mother whose husband is sent off to war. The segment begins as a draft announcement is posted in the town center and the town’s frustrated schoolmaster (Lauro Gazzolo) must read it to his distracted, illiterate students. Antonio (Albino Coco) is relieved to hear that his birth year has not been listed yet, so he decides to marry his love, Carmella (Maria Pia Casilio). Before long, she is pregnant and he is sent off to basic training. Carmella decides to pay him a surprise visit just before he is sent to the front line. When the war ends, she is waiting with her baby as the soldiers arrive home.

Marcello Mastroianni in Divorce Italian Style
“The serenades of the South. The sweet, warm, exhausting Sicilian nights. The whole time I’d been away. The memory of those nights or one particular night had filled my days with longing and nostalgia.” Those words flow through the mind of Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni) as he gazes out the train window at the Sicilian countryside in the opening sequence of Germi’s 1961 comedy Divorce Italian Style. The film was among the first revelations of Germi’s ongoing love affair with the Sicilian culture.

Ferdinando is married to Rosalia (Daniela Rocca), a nagging but well-meaning wife who won’t leave him alone. In search of some peace and quiet, he falls in love with the mild-mannered and charming Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), his first cousin through marriage. His feelings for the young girl become all consuming, and he daydreams about ways to kill Rosalia so that he can be with Angela. Finally, inspired by a local murder trial in which the wife, a victim of adultery, shot her husband to save her family’s honor, he concocts a plan to find a man to seduce his wife so that he can do the same. He buys her a sexy black lace dress and takes her out on the town to see how the locals react. Indeed, she catches their attention, so the plan is set into motion. The film garnered three Oscar nominations, including Best Actor in a Leading Role and Best Director. It was awarded an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. It was the first of many collaborations between Germi and Sandrelli.

A Scene from Seduced and Abandoned

Germi teamed up again with the actress for Seduced and Abandoned, his follow-up masterpiece in the commedia all’italiana genre. The film opens with Agnese played by a gorgeous Sandrelli wearing a fitted black dress walking through the narrow streets of her Sicilian village. As she heads to confession, a Sicilian troubadour accompanied by a mandolin tells her story of giving in to lustful feelings for her sister’s fiancé, Peppino. Upon entering the confessional, she breaks down in tears, only to have the priest further shame her. Peppino announces that he doesn’t want to marry a girl who succumbs to temptation, even if it was with him, and flees. A chase ensues as the singing/narrator describes Agnese’s father’s determination to save the family’s honor. Peppino won’t budge, and the family lawyer comes up with a plan to shoot Peppino in a way that would be easily defended in court. The film won a whole slew of awards, including a David Di Donatello for Best Director.

Stefania Sandrelli and Dustin Hoffman in Alfredo, Alfredo
Another notable work is Germi’s 1972 film Alfredo, Alfredo. Dustin Hoffman is Alfredo Sbisà, a down-to-earth, shy guy who falls in love with the beautiful Maria Rosa (Sandrelli). The film begins with the couple meeting with a lawyer to finalize their divorce. As Alfredo contemplates the spell that Rosa had cast upon him, he tells their story through a flashback beginning on the fateful night they met. When Alfredo saw Maria Rosa, it was love at first sight and he is thrilled to learn the feeling is mutual. Little by little, Maria Rosa reveals her controlling, jealous tendencies, which Alfredo believes marriage will solve. But after the two are wed, life gets more chaotic and ultimately becomes unbearable. During a rare night out with his best friend, Alfredo meets Carolina (Carla Gravina), the polar opposite of Maria Rosa. They fall in love and suddenly Alfredo finds himself the leader of a movement to make divorce legal in Italy. Although the film is a comedy, the story is complex and tackles real-life issues of personality disorders and emotional abuse. It’s not a particularly well-known movie but an example of the masterful storytelling by Germi’s generation of iconic filmmakers. The film won a David Di Donatello for Best Film and scored Hoffman honorary citizenship in the town of Ascoli Piceno, located in the central region of Marche, where it was shot.

Germi passed away two years later in 1974 at the age of 60. In 2009, a documentary was made featuring his peers and collaborators. A treasure trove of old interviews, the film includes Claudia Cardinale, Mario Monicelli, Stefania Sandrelli and Carlo Verdone. Titled, Pietro Germi: The Man with the Cigar in His Mouth, it is available to stream at www.criterionchannel.com.

All of the above films are available stateside. Mid-Century Loves is available to stream on Amazon. Divorce Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned are available to stream on the Criterion Channel. The DVD for Alfredo, Alfredo is available on Amazon. A low-quality version can be found here on YouTube. (Click on the titles for the links to see the films.)

 Seduced and Abandoned is also available to stream on Amazon..



- Written by Jeannine Guilyard for Fra Noi Magazine, August 2019 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Timeless Talent of Stefania Sandrelli

On screen since the tender age of 14, she has captivated audiences for more than 50 years with a compelling combination of strength and vulnerability. She achieved stardom at just 14 years old playing the angelic cousin of a love-struck Marcello Mastroianni in Pietro Germi’s “Divorce Italian Style.” More than half a century later, she is still going strong and remains one of Italy’s most esteemed actors. Stefania Sandrelli was born on June 5, 1946, in Viareggio in the province of Lucca in northern Italy. As a child, she studied music and dance. Then in 1960, she won a beauty pageant and was featured on the cover of Le Ore magazine. Her purity captivated the country and shortly thereafter, movie offers began pouring in. Just one year later, she made her cinema debut in three feature films: Mario Sequi’s Gioventù di notte , Luciano Salce’s The Fascist, and Pietro Germi’s Divorce Italian Style . She instantly became a star and before long was a key figure in Italy’s legendary
Post a Comment
Read more

Anna Foglietta: Actress and Activist with Old School Elegance

One look at actress Anna Foglietta in her any of her roles, and the Golden Age of Italian cinema comes to mind. Among Italy’s most sought-after actresses today, Foglietta brings to the table a classic eloquence of yesterday while representing Italy’s modern woman. Born in Rome in 1979, Foglietta began her career in 2005 with a role in the RAI television series La squadra . Her character Agent Anna De Luca had a two-year run on the series as she was transitioning to cinema with Paolo Virzì’s 2006 ensemble project 4-4-2- Il gioco più bello del mondo . Since then, she has become one of Italy’s most diverse actresses, transforming herself into interesting, layered characters for comedies and dramas alike. Aside from a small part in Anton Corbijn’s 2010 film The American starring George Clooney, Foglietta’s work began reaching mainstream American audiences in 2015. As Elisa in Edoardo Leo’s 2015 comedy Noi e la Giulia , Foglietta showed her funny side playing a goofball pregn
Post a Comment
Read more

New faces of Italian cinema

Angelo Iannelli With the 2012 film festivals just about wrapped up, we saw a big emphasis this year on newly emerging and independent filmmakers. This was most notable in the Venice Film Festival's Horizon's program, which gave these filmmakers an unprecedented amount of visibility as the program reached out to people all over the world via the internet.  To mark this current trend, I recently caught up with two independent filmmakers in Rome: Angelo Iannelli and Vito Napolitano. Each filmmaker has experience on both sides of the camera. Their origins are based in the south of Italy but they are now living in Rome. Angelo Iannelli was born in Benevento in the region of Campania, while Vito Napolitano is from Lecce in Puglia. What I enjoyed the most about our conversation is the passion with which the two young filmmakers speak about cinema. They are so enthusiastic and about their craft, they reel you right into their dreams. The three of us recently met up at the Li
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sweetness and Genius of Giulietta Masina

Fellini and Masina on the set of "La Strada" As open-hearted and sunny as Federico Fellini was dark and complex, they were perfect counterpoints during a half-century of marriage and professional collaboration.  Nicknamed a  “female Chaplin” and described by Chaplin himself as  the actress who moved him most,  Giulietta Masina confronted the tragedy of her characters with an eternal innocence and enthusiasm that gave Italians hope in the most challenging of times.  Born in 1921 in San Giorgio di Piano, a commune north of Bologna, Masina was the oldest of four children born to a father who was a music professor and violinist and a mother who was a grade-school teacher. Her parents sent her as a child to live in Rome with her widowed aunt while she attended school there. As Masina took an early interest in gymnastics, her aunt saw in her a passion for performing and encouraged her to pursue acting. So after high school, Masina attended Rome’s La Sapienza Universit
Post a Comment
Read more

"Cinema saved my life" - A Portrait of Claudia Cardinale

Update May 9, 2016 It's just been announced that Claudia Cardinale will present her latest film, "All Roads Lead to Rome" in Niagara Falls, Canada on June 18, 2016 at the Niagara Integrated Film Festival   connecting with Canada's annual Italian Contemporary Italian Film Festival . In these times of reality television, internet streaming and 15 minutes of fame, there are few legends living among us. Actress Claudia Cardinale is one of those few. A truly unique and special person, Cardinale was born in Tunisia in 1938 to Sicilian parents. Her maternal grandparents were originally from the Sicilian island of Trapani, but settled in La Goulette, Tunisia, where there was a large Italian community. Her early life seems something of a fairytale but success brought its share of problems. As a young girl, Cardinale attended elementary school in the ancient city of Carthage. Her first cinematic experience came when she participated in the making of a short film with her
Post a Comment
Read more