This year's Beijing Film Festival has two very interesting films with very similar names. One is "Italian Marriage" and the other is "Italian Divorce". The two films were shown at the same time. The audience first experienced an ironic "marriage". Immediately afterwards, there was a comical "divorce", and there was a lot of fun in the marriage relationship that was divided and closed.
Both films are comedies. Just listening to the names will make you mistakenly think that "Marriage" comes first and "Divorce" comes after. Gives the illusion of an up-and-down episode. But the fact is just the opposite. The two were neither shot by the same director, nor did they have a relationship with the sequel. Not only that, but in terms of production time, "Divorce" was earlier than "Marriage". The former was a black-and-white film and the latter was a color film. The two happened to be in the period of confrontation and transition between Italian black-and-white and color films. Therefore, although the two have similarities in the background and themes of the times, they also undoubtedly have the peculiarities in the creative style. Putting them together can be said to complement each other and provide a documentary-like reference for contemporary movie fans.
The director of "Divorce" is the famous Italian director Piato Jamie. The film was not only well received in Italy, but also well received overseas. It is said that the film did not have subtitles when it was shown in the United States, but it still won the It was generally recognized and won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Five years after the release of Divorce, Piato won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for A Gentleman. "Marriage" is directed by Vittorio de Sica, one of the most important directors of Italian neorealist films. Different from its previous works, "Marriage" no longer simply focuses on the hard life of the bottom society like "The Bicycle Stealer" and "Wind Candle Tears", but tells the story of marriage between middle-class men and women at the bottom, reflecting the There is a clearer class flow and integration. At the same time, "Divorce" also hints at the marriage between the old aristocracy and the "upstart" of the bourgeoisie - at the end of the film, the hero finally gets rid of his wife and finally gets married with his niece - although they His parents disagreed and even took their own lives for it.
Both are describing marriage and even "marriage", which can be said to be a coincidence in the plot, and it is indeed closely related to the political and social conditions in Italy at that time and the development of the film industry: in the early 1960s, Italy had basically walked out of World War II. The gloom of the economy and society has been completed, and the middle and upper classes have gradually recovered. During this period, the censorship of the bourgeois government led to the gradual narrowing of the creative space for films. Neorealism itself adhered to the creed of not using big stars. Its plots were full of hardships, bitterness, and the world. The lack of entertainment made these films very difficult. It is difficult to arouse the interest of Italian audiences for a long time. Therefore, both "Marriage" and "Divorce" can be said to be new things that took advantage of social development and the decline of neorealism.
If the biggest weakness of Italian neorealism is the portrayal of specific characters, then "Marriage" is absolutely refreshing. In fact, the most touching thing in the whole story is the motherly love of his wife Philomena (played by the famous Italian actress Sofia Loren): she has never told her "husband-to-be" Dominic that they have a child for many years. She is sure that Dominic will definitely let her abort the child after knowing it; she uses "tricks" to let Dominic, who has been lukewarm to herself for many years, marry her as his wife, in order to give the children a comfortable living environment and a share Indispensable fatherly love; she did not tell Dominic which of the three children was born to her, in order to prevent Dominic from being partial to the three children... All of this reflects the brilliance of maternal love and De Sica's insight into motherhood. The transformation of husband Dominic is also quite interesting: from the youthful frivolity and cynicism in the flashback, to the anger at Philomena's "scam" behavior, to the confusion and entanglement of not knowing which is his son, and finally to In the end, the joy and joy of getting a child in old age, although the whole process is in the tone of comedy, is full of ups and downs of real human nature, and accurately understands the complete psychological process of an old boy becoming a real man who dares to take responsibility. It can be said that in "Marriage", the characters finally stand out from the background, the state and psychology of the characters are solid and full, and these are extremely rare in the works of De Sica's neorealism period.
The interesting thing about "Divorce" is that Baron Cefaro, the protagonist played by Mastroianni, always has all kinds of "unrealistic" evil thoughts in his heart, such as burying his wife alive in order to marry his niece. Or boil it into soap, or plot a series of conspiracies that can kill his wife and save his own life, the insidiousness of which is revealed through the contradiction between the voice-over and the action; but in the face of his niece, Cefaro's love is close to Naive, full of sweet fantasies. This anxiety about marriage, affection, and fidelity, in Antonioni's hands, would turn into the modernity of Adventures (1960), into the serious philosophies of "everyone is an island"; In Jamie's hands, it turned into an absurd human comedy with murder elements.
It is also a manifestation of men's obsession with women's bodies at that time. Antonioni asked a group of unknown men in the Sicilian town of Noto to silently approach the heroine Monica Vitti, and let tens of thousands of eyes greedily "prey on" her body. Created an extremely terrifying atmosphere of male power; Piato Jamie arranged the banned film that was popular in Italy at the time - Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" ( La Dolce Vita , 1960) at the most important juncture of the plot development. (the hero of this film is also Mastroianni, and the hero in "Divorce" is called "Fei Fei" by his wife), and a group of people who are more boys than men crowded in Sicily Enjoy a "visual feast" of breasts and buttocks in the smoke-filled small theater. Again it's easy to think of "The Beautiful Sicily" (it seems that Sicilian/Italian men are really unabashed about their desires), but Piato's tone is neither Tonadore's lyrical nor Antonio's Ni's accusation is just a playful presentation of a man's desire, and pushes this absurd impulse and ridiculous consequences to the audience.
Throughout the history of film, it seems that there is no master who does not like to make a fuss about marriage - Antonioni regards marriage as a target, Bergman writes compromise to the extreme, Ozu regards this ethical relationship as the normal state of life and death, and Truffaut is It infuses a flood of emotions. At the end of "Italian Marriage", Filomena's three children called Dominica "Dad", and the couple finally shed tears of happiness that had been suppressed for a long time; "Italian Divorce" made "a lover" " Families", but an unfaithful murder ended with a life, but it could not end another more bloody plot. Both films use "Italian style" as the attribution of the marriage relationship, which shows what kind of social universality is contained in these plots, and the tears and laughter, love and hate in them undoubtedly show that such "life events" must be hidden. There is a certain inevitability that is bigger than the state and smaller than the human heart.
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