Divorce Italian Style Reviews

In a humorous bit of stunt casting, Divorce, Italian Style sees Marcello Mastroianni as an aristocratic married man, trapped by circumstance and general inertia in a life of dwindling wealth and sexual satisfaction, who longs to divorce his wife and shack up with the nubile young sexpot-next-door. None of this seems terribly strange for a Mastroianni character, but it’s the way that the film purposefully subverts this archetype into a running punch line that makes the casting choice so delicious.

The film tells us that it’s easier in Italy for men to kill their wives if they’ve been discovered in a compromising position then it is to divorce them. So, in order to runoff into the beautiful sunset, Mastroianni designs to turn himself into a cuckold, eventually turning his societal shame into personal gain by murdering his wife, Daniela Rocca, looking unattractive but playing the suffocating and devoted wife.

The way that Mastroianni plays his part is absolutely delightful. Pitched somewhere between pretentious Euro-trash sophisticate and Buster Keaton’s great stone face, he thoroughly enacts his plans, meanwhile ignoring the nymphet that he’s trying to throw away his whole life for. Unlike Fellini’s semi-autobiographical stories which featured Mastroianni standing in for the director in a sympathetic light, Divorce paints his character and his deeds as the absolutely sleaziest, distinctly un-self-aware actions in an unsympathetic light. Especially since the film is narrated from his character’s point-of-view. To say that he is an unreliable storyteller is but an understatement.

While it does trade in clichés – the doomed wife is an ignored, lusty, needy; the mistress is incredibly naïve, pure, busty, and ripe with blossoming sexuality – it rackets them far enough into the realm of the absurd to make it bleakly hilarious. Cynical, bitter, and amoral – Divorce, Italian Style is a martial strife masterpiece, anchored by an Oscar nominated performance by Mastroianni.