Love and lust among the Mediterranean set can be murder. Divorce Italian Style is a surprisingly lighthearted black comedy of how one man managed to get what he wanted even if it meant leaving bodies all around.
Ferdinando Cefalu (Marcello Mastroianni) may have the title of Count, but he does not have the resources of one. In his town of Agramonte, the Cefalu family has fallen on hard times. Ferdinando's father has been forced to rent half of the family home to his wealthier brother, who are slowly taking over.
This is not so bad for Ferdinando, for he can look in on his luscious cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli). Unfortunately, the Count has a Countess, Rosalia (Daniela Rocca). Rosalia is generally sweet and devoted to Fernie. Fernie, however, finds her unattractive and would be happier without her. Divorce is illegal in Italy, so Ferdinando cannot get rid of his loyal wife. There is, however, a certain option that he can look into to find himself sans wife: Murder.
He can't literally just kill her outright. He can fantasize about boiling her or seeing her drown in quicksand. Angela, whom he discovers is just as passionate about him as he for her, is sent off to a convent school. It looks like all Ferdinando can do is fantasize and endure his good wife.
Then, he like all of Italy, becomes engrossed in a criminal scandal. A woman has murdered her philandering husband in a crime of passion. The defense attorney manages to get the wronged wife a light sentence for her crime. What is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose in Ferdinando's mind. Therefore, all he needs to do is find Rosalia a lover, catch them in the act, and shoot one or both dead.
Easier said than done. Rosalia is faithful and finding a suitable lover is hard. Then comes the perfect pigeon. Carmelo Patane (Leopoldo Trieste) was one of Rosalia's former suitors before the war. Carmelo, who had mistakenly been declared dead during the war, is now very much alive. He is now an art restorer, and it just so happens that the Cefalu mansion's murals need some work.
This wicked plan has a few hiccups. There is Rosalia's stubborn but weakening resistance to her old flame. There's how Carmelo is himself married with three children. Getting a faithful wife to commit adultery is hard work. Things eventually start looking up for Ferdinando, culminating in a planned tryst for the painter and his girl while everyone goes to see the scandalous film La Dolce Vita. Things, however, do not go exactly as planned.
Things, however, do eventually turn Ferdinando's way. Admittedly, not as he had planned, but with the end results that Ferdinando and Angela can finally be together and be financially well-off. Ultimately, though, it looks like the new Countess may herself be looking to find Divorce Italian Style.
There is a dark wit in Divorce Italian Style that makes the film if not flat-out funny at least very sharp. The Oscar-winning screenplay by Alfredo Giannetti, Ennio De Concini and director Pietro Germi know that the film is a farce. We see this through various visual and audio elements. Divorce Italian Style has Ferdinando's voiceover narration. He metaphorically welcomes us into his past (the film is mostly in flashback). We hear his frustration at having a loyal but to him, unappealing wife. We hear his yearning for that not-so-obscure object of desire. I do not know if he makes us part of his plan. However, it has the effect of making the viewer see Ferdinando as a gleefully amoral figure.
We also see this in the various fantasies that Ferdinando has about seeing Rosalia meet her end. Seeing him dump her into boiling water and drowning her did not make me laugh out loud. It did, however, make me chuckle. This is because the various fantasies were played so broadly that they have the intended effect of looking farcical. Ferdinando may be planning to kill, but he shows himself as pretty inept.
As part of his scheme, he has secret audio recording equipment placed in the reception room where Carmelo is working. When he finally has a record of the now-lovers planning a second tryst, the tape cuts off before he can get the needed information. Seeing him rewind the tape to see if he can get more information is funny.
In other hands, perhaps, it might come off as silly. In Marcello Mastroianni's hands, it comes off as someone more calculating. It is as if he knows that he has to play this role even though he is secretly delighted that Rosalia is out of his greased hair. In his faux sad expression and long cigarette holder, he makes Ferdinando a man unaware of how pretentious and absurd he is.
The other performances balance the deliberately exaggerated tone Divorce Italian Style has. Daniela Rocca plays it mostly straight as the loyal and loving Rosalia. She, however, can slip into the farcical nature of Divorce Italian Style during the death fantasies. Leopoldo Trieste's Carmelo too kept within the deliberately farcical manner of the story. Director Pietro Germi kept a firm balance between showing these characters as exaggerated without anyone slipping into cartoonishly broad. They were absurd but everyone was in on the joke.
Carlo Rustichelli's score kept to Divorce Italian Style's light, broad manner. The entire sequence of having the whole town desperate to watch the forbidden film La Dolce Vita was clever. It showed the townsfolk as quite desirous of scandal. It was also a nice in-joke since Marcello Mastroianni was the star of that look into the decadence of Rome's jet set.
Divorce Italian Style is a wicked satire on the lengths people will go to circumvent the letter of the law by committing worse crimes. Divorce and murder may not be the funny business. Divorce Italian Style shows that they can blend for some good humor.
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