Initially Pietro Germi intended to direct Divorce, Italian Style as a serious drama but soon admitted, "the deeper we got into the subject, though, we simply couldn't ignore the grotesquely comic aspects to the so-called crime of honor." (from Marcello Mastroianni: His Life and Art by Donald Dewey). Indeed, it would be difficult to take the plot seriously: Ferdinando, a Sicilian nobleman (Mastroianni), becomes infatuated with his sixteen-year-old cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli) and vows to marry her but there's an obstacle - his wife Rosalia (Daniela Rocca). Since the Vatican doesn't condone divorce, Ferdinando comes up with an alternate plan of action - manipulate his wife into an affair with her former admirer, Carmelo (Leopoldo Trieste), catch them in a compromising situation and kill her on the spot - reasoning that a crime of passion killing will only earn him a light prison sentence.
It's interesting to note that Mastroianni was not a shoo-in for the role of Ferdinando, despite his highly regarded reputation among Italian directors at that time. According to the actor in Marcello Mastroianni: The Fun of Cinema by Matilde Hochkofler (Gremese), "Germi's image of me as an actor was strictly limited to my image in La Dolce Vita and perhaps he also felt I belonged to the same social class. He was a reserved man, almost rude, a misanthrope who seemed almost to despise anyone who had anything to do with the frivolous world of cinema...When for various reasons, a long list of actors turned down the offer of the film, and in addition, according to the usual laws of cinema, they needed a big-name actor, a box-office success, he followed up a suggestion of one of the film's production organizers who had mentioned my name. I brought him some photographs, some images that had been produced while I was making Phantoms of Rome. I had my hair curled, then straightened, moustaches applied, and so on. In other words, I did the kind of audition you do when you're first starting out in cinema. When he had seen the photographs, and the audition, he changed his mind and I went ahead with the film..."
In creating his character, Mastroianni employed certain mannerisms and gestures from his own observation of Sicilian men as well as copying personal tics from those around him like Germi who often made an odd sucking/clicking sound with his mouth due to gum problems. In terms of Ferdinando's sometimes rigid posture and movements, Mastroianni "had in mind [Mario] Monicelli's instructions to Tiberio Murgia from The Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), when he used to say, 'Be haughty, Murgia, be haughty." But while Mastroianni was intensely focused on his performance, his co-star Daniela Rocca was having great difficulty playing her part. Rumored to be having a secret affair with Germi at the time of shooting, Rocca would often show signs of emotional duress on the set. According to Rocca's co-star Stefania Sandrelli (in Matilde Hochkofler's biography of Marcello),"She had won all these beauty contests and was being compared to Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. It was very important for her to be beautiful and admired, and she would go into hysterics whenever she had to put on her wig and the other things that made her ugly." The seriousness of Rocca's condition became apparent one day while filming a scene in which the baron's family is having dinner. Mastroianni recalled, "Suddenly, without my having said or done anything and without any warning from her, suddenly she gives me a whack in the face that almost took my head off. I was stunned. Then, just as I was getting my bile back up and was about to say, "You idiot! What the hell's wrong with you?," I saw something in her face that made me stop. From that moment on, I don't think I or anyone else in the troupe could think of her as just another working colleague." A few days after this incident, Rocca slashed her wrists in an apparent suicide attempt. Luckily, she recovered and eventually completed the film though she would retire from the screen in 1967.
In general, critics were unanimous in their praise of Divorce, Italian Style during its initial release and singled out Mastroianni, in particular. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote "Not since Charlie Chaplin's beguiling Verdoux have we seen a deliberate wife killer so elegant and suave, so condescending in his boredom, so thoroughly and pathetically enmeshed in the suffocating toils of a woman as Mr. Mastroianni is here. His eyelids droop with a haughtiness and ennui that are only dispelled when he looks with a gaze of lecherous longing at his teenage cousin."
Giancarlo Giannini, the star of Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away (1974) and other films for the director, once admitted that he modeled many of his Sicilian characters on Mastroianni's performance in Divorce, Italian Style. In addition to Mastroianni's Best Actor Oscar® nomination for Germi's film, he also won the Best Foreign Actor award in England (the BAFTA film award) and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actor in a musical/comedy. Divorce, Italian Style also received two additional Oscar® nominations for Best Director and for Best Original Screenplay (by Ennio De Concini, Alfredo Giannetti and Pietro Germi); it won in the latter category.
Producer: Franco Cristaldi
Director: Pietro Germi
Screenplay: Pietro Germi, Ennio de Concini, Alfredo Giannetti, Agenore Incrocci
Cinematography: Leonida Barboni, Carlo Di Palma
Film Editing: Roberto Cinquini
Art Direction: Carlo Egidi
Music: Carlo Rustichelli
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni (Ferdinando), Daniela Rocca (Rosalia), Stefania Sandrelli (Angela), Leopoldo Trieste (Carmelo Patane), Odoardo Spadaro (Don Gaetano), Margherita Girelli (Sisina).
BW-101m. Letterboxed.
by Jeff Stafford
