What's a poor Baron to do?
He's in love with his sixteen-year-old cousin.
He's married to a clingy and not so attractive woman
with a little moustache.
The laws in Italy in the early 1960s do not allow divorce.
But they don't look too harshly on murder, if the murder
is for family honor - for example, catching your wife
with another lover.
That is the germ of Pietro Germi's brilliant dark comedy,
Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio All'Italiana).
Mastroianni, with his slicked-back hair, his moustache, his
cigarette holder, and his perpetually drooping eyelids gives
one of the greatest comedy performances in all of cinema.
Rocca is a wonderful foil, and Sandrelli is luminous and angelic.
Add to that a cast of great Italian character actors, a brilliant
screenplay (which won the Academy Award) and you have the
recipe for Comedy, Italian Style, one that is as funny and
sharp today as it was then.
The film was a sensation and audiences all over the world
were entranced.
It was hugely influential and ushered in a whole era of Comedy
Italian Style, which included Germi's own Seduced and
Abandoned, Marriage Italian Style, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow
and others.
In addition to winning the Academy Award for Best Screenplay
(Ennio de Concini, Alfred Gianetti, and Germi), Mastroianni
received a Best Actor nomination and Germi a Best Director
nomination, which, considering the competition in 1962, one
of the greatest years in film history, was really something.
Aiding and abetting the mischievous fun was the wonderful
score by Carlo Rustichelli.
Rustichelli, born in 1916, had begun working in film in 1939
and by 1962 had become a hugely popular composer for Italian
films.
His first film for Pietro Germi was Lost Youth in 1948 and
thus began one of the longest and most fruitful director/composer
collaborations ever, with Rustichelli composing scores for
all but the first of Germi's films - eighteen
in total.
He also worked with other directors such as Billy Wilder,
Mario Bava, Gillo Pontecorvo, Luigi Comencini, and provided
scores for countless sword and sandal films, spaghetti westerns,
crime films, and just about every genre imaginable.
He was a superb melodist, and Divorce Italian Style is rife
with great themes, which all serve the film perfectly.
In fact, the film would be unthinkable without Rustichelli's
wonderful and tuneful score.
Divorce Italian Style was released on a United Artists LP.
As was the case with several UA soundtrack albums, there were
both mono and stereo releases, but both were actually mono.
For this premiere CD release the original mono album masters
were used.
Additionally, we're pleased to present a suite of additional
and alternate cues that were not included on the LP.
Divorce Italian Style is a one-of-a-kind classic and so is
its score by Carlo Rustichelli. |
