Sara Batkie
It’s hard to think of a star as timeless as Marcello Mastroianni having birthdays. It feels like he’s always been with us. Born one hundred years ago on September 28th, he made 147 films in his nearly six decades on the screen. Among his many honors, he’s one of only three performers to win the Best Actor Award at Cannes twice. His collaborations with Federico Fellini made him world famous, his eight pairings with Sophia Loren made him a sex symbol, and his real-life affairs with several of cinema’s most beautiful women made him tabloid fodder. His comedic roles can feel overlooked by comparison, but that’s what makes revisiting them now so refreshing. Case in point: 1961’s satire of Sicilian mores, Divorce Italian Style.
Set in the small Southern town of Agramonte, Divorce follows the escapades of Ferdinando Cefalù, a baron whose family has fallen on hard times. As played by Mastroianni, he’s all smug entitlement, introduced wearing sunglasses with a greasy helmet of slicked back hair and a thin white cigarette holder between his lips. It’s like looking in a funhouse mirror of his past charm. Ferdinando, or Fefe as he’s affectionately known, narrates his story with a gusto befitting one of the operas that plays on the soundtrack, making himself out to be the romantic hero. In the process, it’s impossible to see him as anything other than a heartless cad.
The set-up is fairly simple: Fefe has been married to the sweet but overbearing Rosalia (played by a game Daniela Rocca) for over a decade but is hopelessly in love with Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), who is not only his cousin but a mere sixteen years old. Since divorce is still illegal in this devoutly Catholic society, Fefe hatches a plan to rid himself of his unibrowed spouse by setting her up: he’ll catch her in flagrante with another man and murder her to avenge his honor. He’ll get three to seven years for the crime, but he’s confident Angela will wait for him. He just has to find the right candidate for the job. Things, inevitably, do not go according to plan.
Watching Divorce now, it’s fascinating to contemplate just how early in his career Mastroianni was willing to skewer his playboy image. Though he first appeared onscreen as a teenager way back in 1939, he was only about a decade into his stardom with two major roles under his belt: 1959’s Big Deal on Madonna Street and 1960’s La Dolce Vita. It’s the memory of the latter that particularly suffuses the proceedings here. In a canny meta touch by co-writer and director Pietro Germi, Vita even plays a crucial part in the plot. During the local premiere of the scandalous picture, Fefe’s wife feigns a headache while the rest of the family attends along with most of the town. As the infamous Trevi Fountain scene unspools, Fefe sneaks out hoping to finally commit his dastardly deed, only to find Rosalia running off with her lover instead.
Made during the same era that it’s lampooning and adopting a similar machismo as its protagonist, Divorce might not always scan as satire for modern viewers. But it’s also this close-to-the-bone comedy that makes it so enduring. For audiences – especially Italian ones – just one year out from seeing something like La Dolce Vita presented publicly, it must have felt like another bruising salvo in the war against antiquated attitudes. When the local priest in Divorce rails against the film, it feels like a safe joke now, but many contemporary viewers were likely subjected to similar warnings against corruption in the arts back then.
Agramonte might be a provincial place with at least twenty-four churches and modest women, but it’s also where the mafia has begun to take hold. The modesty for women is mostly enforced but the consequences are harsh for those even suspected of violating it; at one point Angela is forced to submit to a midwife’s examination to confirm she hasn’t been “defiled.” Virginity is objectified almost as much as wantonness. Fefe’s plan is inspired by a woman who shot and killed her philandering lover; she gets eight years in prison. Implicit in that sentence is that the minimum for women is longer than the maximum punishment for men for the same crime. It’s a society where women can’t win, and Divorce drives this point home with a sprightliness that risks seeming complicit in what it condemns.
It’s a difficult tightrope to walk, but Mastroianni nails the tone with an agility that recalls the great clowns of cinema past like Keaton and Chaplin. Fefe is a man who takes the fulfillment of his desires as a given, and Mastroianni is careful to maintain this facade, even as it grows more ridiculous. Some of the film’s most sustained comedy comes when Fefe must embrace the shameful guise of a cuckold; the glee Mastroianni takes in this role reversal is palpable. But there’s a sincerity to his objectives that feels authentic to the time and place – Mastroianni himself separated from his wife in 1964 but refused to divorce her, even as he maintained several long-term relationships, some of which resulted in children. It’s a path that Fefe never considers, so bound is he to an outdated conception of honor, and Mastroianni remains resolute all the way to his ironic end. Our hero gets what he wants but, like many of his stubbornly backward countrymen, it won’t be his very long.
“Divorce, Italian Style” is streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of their “Marcello Mastroianni at 100” program.
