(Matrimonio all'italiana)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: Eastmancolor 102m
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Cast: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Aldo Puglisi
Synopsis:
A Neapolitan entrepreneur-baker for years exploits a prostitute for sex, then sets her up in his mother's apartment but continues to chase other women. Exasperated and hurt, she feigns a life-threatening illness in order to manoeuvre him into deathbed nuptials and secure a name for her three illegitimate sons.
Review:
Divorce Italian Style was a comedy in which Mastroianni attempts to divest himself of a wife in order to marry a younger woman. The present movie alludes to it in its title, but is not a sequel so much as a bona fide filming of a play that had already become something of an established property and little earner for its author Eduardo De Filippo. It makes for a predictable vehicle for its stars, Mastroianni bellowing and blustering as an irredeemable cad (who somehow turns out alright in the end), while Loren fashions a portrait of veritable feminine sainthood as the once eponymous Filumena Marturano, her regal bearing and tragic gaze elevating the material into some kind of paean for Italian motherhood.
(Matrimonio all'italiana)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: Eastmancolor 102m
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Cast: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Aldo Puglisi
Synopsis:
A Neapolitan entrepreneur-baker for years exploits a prostitute for sex, then sets her up in his mother's apartment but continues to chase other women. Exasperated and hurt, she feigns a life-threatening illness in order to manoeuvre him into deathbed nuptials and secure a name for her three illegitimate sons.
Review:
Divorce Italian Style was a comedy in which Mastroianni attempts to divest himself of a wife in order to marry a younger woman. The present movie alludes to it in its title, but is not a sequel so much as a bona fide filming of a play that had already become something of an established property and little earner for its author Eduardo De Filippo. It makes for a predictable vehicle for its stars, Mastroianni bellowing and blustering as an irredeemable cad (who somehow turns out alright in the end), while Loren fashions a portrait of veritable feminine sainthood as the once eponymous Filumena Marturano, her regal bearing and tragic gaze elevating the material into some kind of paean for Italian motherhood.
