Divorce Italian Style

Director: Pietro Germi

Divorce Italian Style
Italy, 1962, 104‘
Director: Pietro Germi
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni (Ferdinando Cefalù), Daniela Rocca (Rosalia Cefalù), Stefania Sandrelli (Angela), Leopoldo Trieste (Carmelo Patanè), Odoardo Spadaro (Don Gaetano Cefalù), Margherita Girelli (Sisina)
Selected awards
Oscar 1963 - Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen (Ennio De Concini, Alfredo Giannetti, Pietro Germi), nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Marcelo Mastroianni) and Best Director (Pietro Germi); BAFTA 1964 - Best Foreign Actor (Marcello Mastroianni), nominations for Best Film from any Source and Best Foreign Actress (Daniela Rocca); Cannes 1962 - Best Comedy, nomination for Golden Palm; Golden Globes 1963 - Best Actor - Comedy or Musical (Marcello Mastroianni), Best Foreign Film

Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni) is desperate to marry his cousin, Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), but he is married to Rosalia (Daniela Rocca) and divorce is illegal in Italy. To get around the law, he tries to trick his wife into having an affair so he can catch her and murder her, as he knows he would be given a light sentence for killing an adulterous woman. He persuades a painter to lure his wife into an affair, but Rosalia proves to be more faithful than he expected.
Germi's film makes brilliant dark-grey comedy  of many aspects of Sicilian life outside the strictly sexual, honourable or murderous, and has a magnificently surprising performance from Marcello Mastroianni, who, abandoning his familiarly un-Latin appearance, has grown a downcast-looking moustache and a melancholy air to match it, sleeked his bouncy hair into a horrible japanned block, and acquired a very faint tic on one side of his mouth that assaults him in moments of excitement. For his performance he became the first male actor nominated for an Oscar for a foreign language performance.