List Price: $39.95You Pay Only: $34.99 You Save: $4.96 (12%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0037429202524
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: April 26, 2005
Running Time: 104 minutes
Sales Rank: 20425
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: September 17, 1962
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Editorial Review:
Description:
Baron Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni) longs to marry his nubile cousin Angela, but one obstacle stands in his way: his fatuous and fawning wife, Rosalia. His solution? Since divorce is illegal, he will devise a scenario wherein he can catch his spouse in the arms of another and murder her to save his honor-a lesser offense. Criterion is proud to present director Pietro Germi's hilarious and cutting satire of Italy's hypocritical judicial system and male-dominated culture, winner of the 1962 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, in a two-disc DVD edition that also features a documentary on the director, new interviews with the actors and screenwriter, screen-test footage, and more.
Amazon.com:
Divorce Italian Style is a comedy milestone--a brilliant, biting satire that was originally conceived as a drama; directed with nonstop inventiveness by a filmmaker who had never done comedy; and featuring an actor who, though not even among the first dozen players considered, cemented his international stardom with this performance. The movie also marked a breakthrough for foreign film in America, winning popular as well art-house success, Academy Award nominations for director Pietro Germi and star Marcello Mastroianni, and--the first of only a few foreign-language films to do so--the Oscar itself for Original Screenplay.
On the sun-blasted island of Sicily, Baron Ferdinand 'Fefè' Cefalù (Mastroianni) breaks out of his heat- and boredom-induced stupor long enough to be smitten with mad passion for his 16-year-old cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli). But he's married--to Rosalia (Daniela Rocca), she of the unfortunate mustache--and the Italian Penal Code gives him no way out... except, of course, for catching his wife in adultery and availing himself of the patriarchal license to commit a 'crime of honor.' So Fefè searches for a way to fling Rosalia into the arms of another man.
Mastroianni's Fefè is an indelible masterpiece, visually and behaviorally: a portrait in painterly chiaroscuro, with brilliantined hair, eternally drooping eyelids, a cigarette holder angled in perpetual salute, and a manic, conspiratorial slouch, like Groucho Marx on painkillers. Germi's direction hustles the film along with bold, mobile camerawork, stream-of-consciousness lurches into fantasy and flashback, Fefè's feverish voiceover commentary, and a wonderfully propulsive music score by the late Carlo Rustichelli. --Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Absolutamente, Si. . .
I purchased the other version a few years before the Criterion one came out. This is obviously more superior above and beyond the quality. It was cool to re-discover this movie. If you have other versions, you don't have the whole flick. This is worth it.
Rating: - Joy, Italian Style.
I was amazed that a movie first released in the early sixties remains as non-dated in its perspective and humor as this one does. I picked it up chiefly due to a reference Scorsese makes to it in A Personal Journey. Certainly, Divorce Italian Style is a farce but the emotions and events it contains are ones with which all of us can relate--even though none of us have a need for a Italian "divorce." One also can appreciate the mystique which European films had--as compared to the more stodgy state of American cinema--during that period. I've always loved Marcello Mastroianni and his efforts here are outstanding. He plays his role perfectly and is a figure of both contempt and admiration. All of the acting, however, is great. The plot unwinds slowly but does not end predictably (on the whole). The climax is nuanced and the last frame tells us much about the nature of men and women.
Rating: - Divorce, Italian Style
Germi's wry, black-comedic satire on Italy's outmoded marital laws (divorce was illegal there in the '60s) and culture of machismo was a triumph for the writer-director and his leading man, both of whom picked up Oscar nods. Mastroianni, delivering one of his finest comedic performances, carries the film from first frame to last, almost Keatonesque in his deadpan mannerisms. Originally conceived as a hard-hitting drama (Germi's specialty at the time), "Divorce" delves right into the issue at hand--women--with a devilish, socially biting sense of humor, such as the farcical fantasy sequences where Fefe imagines offing Rosalia in inventive ways. If "Divorce" was always this much fun, who'd be married?
Rating: - Actually Sicilian style
Divorzio all'italiana is a richly textured satire of Sicilian macho Catholic life styles starring one of Italy's greatest actors, Marcello Mastroianni. He is a bit Chaplinesque in this tongue in cheek exploration of how to dump your wife and marry your 16-year-old cousin. His wide-eyed, dead pan expressions combined with vulnerability and suave, leading-man good looks made him the heart-throb of women for decades. He plays a bored baron stuck with a baroness (played fatuously by Daniela Rocca) that he cannot abide. It should be noted that today it IS possible to get a divorce in Italy, but at the time it was very difficult, perhaps easier to get an annulment, and so we have the premise of the plot.
Stefania Sandrelli, who became one of the great ladies of the Italian cinema, plays the cousin. She was only 15 when the film was shot but could easily pass for, say, 18. She is sensual, sweet and a bit naughty. In the final scene, famous for its fitting irony, the last thing we see are her feet. I won't tell you more, but the movie is almost worth seeing just for that final scene.
Rocca's Rosalia on the other hand is more syrupy than sweet and would qualify as clinging. She could smother a lumberjack, and although it is not polite to comment unfavorably on a lady's looks, I must note that she seemed to be having a bad facial hair day, everyday. Her impersonation of a country baroness nonetheless was unforgettable. I also liked 16-year-old Margherita Girelli as Sisini, ... Read More
Rating: - Murder, He Thought
What would you do if you've been married for many years, lost any romantic interest in your less than attractive wife, and fell in love with a beautiful young girl? Divorce, you'd say but there is one thing, you see - in Italy in 1960s there were no divorce. So, once again, what would you do? Made forty five years ago about an old Italian Law that had declared divorce illegal but would give a minimum sentence for killing a cheating spouse, "Divorce, Italian Style" is hilarious, melancholic, biting, clever, and belongs to the best comedies ever. First, Germi was going to make a tragic film and there are many elements of tragedy in "Divorce, Italian Style". After all, two people who are in love and happy together will be killed because of the strict and unforgiving traditions that made their way into the laws of the country. Pietro Germi directed a movie that is saturated with the merciless boredom, suffocating heat and humidity of a small Sicilian town where seemingly nothing ever happens and where Baron Fete Gefalu leads the life of not so quiet desperation with his wife or 13 years, Rosalia who had bored him to death. To make the things worse, his 16 years old angelic cousin Angela (one look at 16 years old Stefania Sandrelli in her early role and you can forgive or at least understand Fete) just returned from the nun school and he is desperately in love with her. As we know, love moves the sun and the planets and it made Fete's mind invent the plan on how to get rid of Rosalia which was deliciously ... Read More
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