Divorce, Italian Style

Divorce, Italian Style

Encyclopedia

Tutorials

Encyclopedia

Dictionary

Directory

Email this to a friend Divorce,_Italian_Style

Sponsored Links

Divorce, Italian Style

Divorce, Italian Style (Italian: Divorzio all'italiana) is a 1961 Italian comedy film directed by Pietro Germi, written by Ennio De Concini, Pietro Germi, Alfredo Giannetti and Agenore Incrocci, and starring Marcello Mastroianni, Daniela Rocca, Stefania Sandrelli, Lando Buzzanca and Leopoldo Trieste. It is a satire, telling the story of a Sicilian nobleman who wants to remarry. Since divorce was illegal in Italy at the time, he has to try to make his current wife have an affair so that he can catch them together, murder her, and receive a light sentence for committing an honour killing.

Divorce, Italian Style won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen, and was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Marcello Mastroianni) and Best Director.

Plot

Ferdinando Cefalù is a baron who is secretly in love with his young and beautiful cousin, Angela. Ferdinando has been married to Rosalia for fifteen years and no longer finds her attractive. Since divorce is illegal and unthinkable as it will damage family honour, Ferdinando desperately searches for a way to dispose of his wife and marry Angela. Angela's parents find out about her love and send her to a convent school. Ferdinando comes to know there exists a loophole in the law which gives only nominal punishment for honour killing. If a husband or wife discovers his or her spouse in the act of adultery and kills the partner in rage, the punishment will be 3-7 years instead of normal 20 years for homicide, because the Italian penal code at the time considered honour killing a mitigating circumstance. Ferdinando makes a plan accordingly. In order to get someone to fall in love with his wife, he even takes her out on the town in attractive outfits to see who glances her way.

He later finds out that the godson of the parish priest, Carmelo, was his wife's teenage lover. He invites Carmelo, who is a painter, to his house with the pretext of gaining his expert advice on some wall paintings of his ancestral home. Ferdinando allows his wife and Carmelo to interact freely while he records their conversations with a tape recorder. As he expected, they again fall in love. He then waits for the precise moment to find them together in a compromising position and kill her.

But things don't proceed as he plans. His wife and Carmelo elope while the entire town is at the theater watching a screening of Fellini's "La Dolce Vita". Carmelo's dishonoured wife arrives and insults him in public, since she is able to figure out what had happened. Ferdinando locates his wife and her lover, and goes there to kill her only to find Carmelo has been shot by his wife. After a brief hesitation, he kills Rosalia, restoring his honour. As he expected, he gets only 3 years of punishment. After being released from prison, he returns to his home town and marries Angela. As the film closes, Ferdinando and Angela are seen aboard a yacht, kissing each other; however, the final scene is that of Angela's foot caressing the bare foot of the yacht pilot.