The 1961 Italian movie “Divorce, Italian Style” was shot in 105 black and white minutes. It is in Italian with English subtitles. It was filmed on Sicily and distributed by the Galatea Production company, a company who produced and distributed Italian movies from 1954 until 1965.
The movie tells the story of Fernando Cefalu, a middle-aged Italian man (Marcello Mastrianni), who, without either provocation or the passing of time, falls in love with his much younger cousin Angela. He wants to marry her, but since divorce was forbidden in Italy at the time by the Church he decides to kill his wife. To receive a lighter sentence he arranges for it to appear that his wife Rosalia has a lover that way he can kill her as a matter of honor.
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Presumably “Divorce, Italian Style” is designed to make fun of the institutions of the Church and Italian government whose world views are outdated and bear no resemblance to reality. I suppose the movie does this, but it doesn’t work for me. The movie is more slapstick and falls into the category of films that are popular because people want to appear sophisticated by liking them. The movie is not profound enough to be interesting, nor is it amusing enough to be entertaining. It is a caricature of a movie, not a movie.
