Bell' Antonio (Mauro Bolognini, 1960)

Claudia Cardinale and Marcello Mastroianni in Bell' Antonio

Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Pierre Brasseur, Rina Morelli, Tomas Milian, Fulvia Mammi, Patrizia Bini, Ugo Torrente. Screenplay: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gino Visentini, based on a novel by Vialiano Brancati. Cinematography: Armando Nannuzzi. Production design: Carlo Egidi. Film editing: Nino Baragli. Music: Piero Piccioni. 

There's no surer target for satire than hypocrisy, particularly when it's rooted in antiquated social mores and religious bigotry. And for Italian filmmakers, there was no more frequent locus for satirizing hypocrisy than Sicily, which was regarded by Northern Italians much the way the American South is seen by the "coastal elites": set in its ways and in the grip of religious intolerance. Usually, Italian films set in Sicily and lampooning hypocrisy are raucous and farcical: Think of Pietro Germi's films Seduced and Abandoned (1964), about the hubbub that ensues when an unmarried woman is discovered to be pregnant, and Divorce, Italian Style (1961), in which Marcello Mastroianni's character comes up against the fact that divorce is illegal, so he plots to catch the wife he doesn't love in an affair and get rid of her by means of an "honor killing." Both films were preceded by Mauro Bolognini's Bell' Antonio, which is just as deeply satiric, but takes a more sober tone in dealing with its subject: a concept of masculinity reinforced by society and supported by the church. There's no better way to appreciate Mastroianni's skill as an actor than to watch Bolognini's film back to back with Divorce, Italian Style. Cocksure and preening in Germi's film, he's lovestruck and tormented in Bolognini's, in which he plays the handsome Antonio of the title, a man with a reputation as a lover of many women, who has slept around but turns impotent when he's with a woman he truly loves. Wedded to the woman of his dreams, Barbara (Claudia Cardinale), he's unable to consummate the marriage and for a while takes advantage of his wife's sexual ignorance. But she discovers that she's been missing something, and takes advantage of the situation to have the marriage annulled so she can marry a much richer man than Antonio. When word of his impotence gets out, not only Antonio but also his bragging, macho father, Alfio (Pierre Brasseur), are ruined in the eyes of the society in which they live. Bell' Antonio is often funny, but not in the broadly comic way of Germi's. Bolognini, and Pier Paolo Pasolini's screenplay, view Antonio's plight with sympathy, casting the blame on the reinforcement of machismo by society and church.