In May 1945, the fascist leader Mussolini was killed by the angry Italian people in the Hanging Corpse Square. This historical event meant the complete collapse of the fascist regime and the complete demise of Italy as a constitutional monarchy. In 1946, Italy finally officially announced the establishment of a republic.
In the decades since the establishment of the Republic, although government changes have become commonplace, and the prime minister’s revolving changes are no longer shocking news, it is intriguing that in Italian social life, many systems are still products of feudalism. Although nobles no longer have privileges in name, as a social class, nobles and their children still have hereditary titles. As long as they want, they can still live in their own hereditary manor, or live as a family, like their ancestors. , Or as the owner of the manor; in the current Italian law, some regulations were formulated by Mussolini in the 1930s; although Catholicism is no longer the state religion, it still has a great influence in social life. Take marriage life as an example. Catholicism is opposed to divorce. After the constant appeals and struggles of the Italian people, it was not until the 1970s that a "divorce law" appeared, which allowed both men and women to divorce without having to break their relationship. After that, I have to suffer to the point of whitening.
The irony of the film "Italian Divorce" is precisely the strange phenomenon that appears in Italy, where the two cultures of feudalism and capitalism are intertwined: murder does not have to pay for life, but divorce is more difficult than ascension, because the law stipulates that everything is for maintenance. Those who cause death by personal dignity or reputation can be sentenced to 7 to 8 years in prison. Therefore, some people use this light sentence to kill people in order to achieve the purpose of divorce. This may only exist in Italy. Director Pietro Germi named his film "Italian Divorce", apparently trying to explain: This is a divorce with Italian characteristics, just like macaroni, it is an Italian specialty.
This was originally a major political or legal issue, but the author expressed it in the form of satirical comedy. This may also belong to the Italian style, because the film "Italian Divorce" can not help but think of Italian "Improvised Comedy".
"Improvised comedy" was produced in the middle of the 16th century. It became a popular comedy in Italy during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was mainly performed by actors in the form of improvisation, mocking certain social phenomena. From this point of view, "Italian Divorce" has inherited the Italian tradition of "improvised comedy", but has made new developments in creative techniques. Director Jeremy combines social satire with characterization to deepen Has the original social significance.
In this film, the main character, Baron Cefalu, is a middle-aged man. He is idle, relying on the shadow of his ancestors, and living a carefree life on the Italian island of Sicily. He does not want to engage in any business activities, and regards watching women and chasing women as the main content of his daily life. He is not easy to learn, but he can use his intellect to design to murder his wife; he does not understand the law, but he can use the loophole of the law to favor feudalism to encourage his own murder. He is stupid, but not disgusting, but has some ridiculous characteristics; he thinks he is smart, but he is actually very stupid, but he is not a harlequin. From the perspective of his character quality, Cefalu is the product of the moral fashion of the capitalism and feudalism in Italian society in the 1960s, and it is an image distorted by this culture.
Rosalie, the wife of Baron Cefalu, also embodies this duality: she is not bad, even a kind woman, and has had an independent love experience, but she is also based on the concept of the family. Married to Cefalu, the son of a declining nobleman. She is content with her status as a declining baroness, and is even willing to live according to the original lifestyle of the nobility, repeating the old dream of the nobility in the limited "historical space", but once the time is right, she can ignore her own " Door style", went to elope with the old lover. She is vulgar, but not arrogant. She has simple thinking and is almost silly, which is more similar to her husband Cefalu. This is logical, because the couple grew up in the same moral style.
In the film, the director Jeremy can always reveal and mock the humble and ridiculous things in their personalities with the inherent ills of the society in which they live, so that the audience feels that this social ill is just what makes the characters appear. The ridiculous root. For example, in daily life, Rosalie, as a noble lady, still orders the maid to make soap by herself. Soap is a product of modern industrial civilization. It’s not that Rosalie can easily buy soap or washing powder in the city without knowing that she wants her maid to make her own, obviously not for saving, but to show her aristocratic style-nobility. His manor should be able to control everything; another example, Cefalu, he designed the murder of his wife to destroy the wife, specifically, to destroy the wife physically, but when he found his wife eloped with others, He was furious, not because the disappearance of his wife destroyed his murder plan, but because he thought that his wife, a baroness, eloped with her, greatly damaging his dignity, and the nobles were very concerned about maintaining their dignity. The honor of the family can and should be paid at all costs.
It is through this technique that Jeremy bitterly and ruthlessly mocked the ridiculousness of such characters and the abominable social customs in which they lived, which made people feel that the character he mocked was essentially a feudal head with a feudal head. The monster of the modern civilization of capitalism.
It is based on this point that what Jeremy allows the audience to see is not the ugly comic characters. He undoubtedly made some exaggeration of the characters, but this exaggeration is moderate, necessary for comedy performance, and also allows the audience to see the deep imprint of this social fashion on the characters, and can't help shouting: How stupid this kind of character and this kind of social fashion are!
After "Italian Divorce" came out, it was quickly regarded as a model film of "Italian comedy" by western critics. The success of the film is inseparable from the performances of the famous actor Marcello Mastroiani who played the Baron Cefalu and Daniela Roga who played Rosalie. Especially Mastroiani, he is very accurate in grasping the role of Cefalu, he always integrates Cefalu’s stupidity and cleverness just right into one, providing the audience with a vivid picture of the fallen aristocracy in southern Italy. Image.
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