Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

James Hitchcock Although I know Vittorio De Sica by reputation as one of Italy's most famous directors, I am not particularly familiar with his work; classic Italian films rarely turn up on British television. When, therefore, the specialist movie channel Talking Pictures recently showed his "Matrimonio all'Italiana" I jumped at the chance to watch it, even though it was dubbed into English. (I greatly prefer to watch foreign-language films with subtitles, partly because I find it off-putting to watch actors whose words do not match their lip movements, and partly because comparing the spoken dialogue with the translation helps me improve my knowledge of the language. Although I gather that in this case much of the dialogue is in Neapolitan dialect rather than standard Italian, so it wouldn't have been much use to me).During World War II Domenico Soriano, a wealthy and successful young businessman, meets a seventeen-year-old girl named Filumena Marturano working in a brothel. The two begin a relationship and eventually Domenico takes her out of the brothel and sets her up in a flat as his mistress. There Filumena, who comes from a very poor background, has an enviable standard of living, but her one concern is that Domenico always refuses to marry her, even though he is single and there is no other woman in his life.The main action takes place twenty-odd years later. Domenico is now around fifty, although still handsome, but Filumena, at forty, is now losing her looks. Matters come to a head when she discovers that Domenico is planning to marry a girl who works in his business, young enough to be his daughter. She resorts to a subterfuge, pretending to be seriously ill. Believing Filumena to be on her deathbed, Domenico agrees to marry her, only for her to stage a remarkable recovery as soon as the marriage has taken place.The title (normally rendered in English as "Marriage Italian Style") suggests that director Vittorio De Sica, or rather Eduardo De Filippo who wrote the play upon which the film was based, intended to satirise Italian sexual mores, particularly the way in which Italian men treat women. (Perhaps De Filippo was being too hard on his fellow-countrymen; I am sure that men like Domenico can be found in most countries). The film is sometimes referred to as a "romantic comedy", but in fact the comedy is often bitter and cynical, with little that is in any way romantic about it. Domenico is a singularly unpleasant figure, the sort of man who never thinks of anyone other than himself and who never does anything without a self-centred motive. He thinks that he owns Filumena and probably thinks that he will own his virginal young fiancée after their planned marriage.Filumena herself can certainly be self-centred as well as devious, but in her case there are two mitigating factors. The first is that her arrangement with Domenico is the only escape she can see from the two equally unappealing alternatives of life as a prostitute or a life of grinding poverty in the slums of Naples. The second is that she has a genuine affection for her sons.Oh yes, Filumena has sons, three of them to be precise. This revelation towards the end of the film comes as a surprise to the audience. It comes as a surprise to Domenico as well. It does rather strain credibility to ask us to accept that Domenico failed to notice, on three separate occasions, that his mistress was pregnant, but De Filippo was probably using implausibility for satirical effect to emphasise just how little interest Italian men show in their women. To make matters worse from Domenico's point of view, he turns out to have fathered only one of the boys, and Filumena refuses to tell him which is his or who the other two fathers are.Marcello Mastroianni makes Domenico convincingly nasty, although Sophia Loren has a rather more difficult task. At the time the film was made in 1964, Loren, one of the world's most famously beautiful actresses, would have been around thirty, but here she is not called upon to play a beautiful thirty-year-old. In the scenes set in the forties Filumena is a naïve teenager and in those set in the sixties she is a careworn, fading woman of forty. Perhaps surprisingly, she succeeds better in the latter of these two roles, with the aid of some creative make-up. She never really seems convincing as a teenager."Marriage Italian Style" is enjoyable enough as a comedy of manners, or perhaps a comedy of lack of manners, although I felt that it didn't really have enough depth to justify the "classic" status some have claimed for it. Nevertheless, it did enough to make me want to make sure I set the video recorder next time one of de Sica's films comes on TV. 6/10

gavin6942 The rich man Domenico (Marcello Mastroianni) and Filumena (Sophia Loren), a penniless prostitute, share great part of their lives in the immediate post WWII Italy.The film was adapted by Leonardo Benvenuti, Renato Castellani, Piero De Bernardi and Tonino Guerra from the play "Filumena Marturano" by Eduardo De Filippo. "Filumena Marturano" had already been adapted as a film in 1950 in Argentina. In some ways these themes would continue at least up through "Pretty Woman", for better or worse.I do not think there is anything "Italian style" about the marriage presented here. In fact, it could be said of many post-war countries. The United States never (to my knowledge) was ever sunk into such a state (maybe in 1812?), but one imagines that women turn to prostitution in many war-torn regions, from the Middle East, to Korea to Eastern Europe.

Feeny0902 This film was done because Sophia Loren wanted to do an interpretation of Eduardo De Filippo's play. The movie lacks the proletariat and cultured feel of the play, but rather offers a stylized interpretation of a great comedy. Loren is a fine passive aggressive actress, who portrays a woman in love and a woman in love 20 years down the line. She has great comedic timing in this role, though she doesn't have the same grit as the theatrical character is meant to. The chemistry between Loren and Mastroianni has great tension. He straddles a line between slick and comically confused. The actors and director capture the madness of love in real life. The flashbacks of their love life is captivating and builds very well. As the secrets and emotions unfold, you are drawn into the romance and tension of it all. They do not write stories like this anymore. This is original, it has heart and comedy. It is a great film to let you laugh and reflect on life.

Galina "Marriage Italian Style" is director Vittorio De Sica's fourth collaboration with the actress Sophia Loren. Loren's sensual exiting beauty, fine comic timing, combined with a brilliant script and the rare chemistry with the co-star Marcello Mastroianni makes the film an excellent combination of a sparkling and amusing farce and a poignant drama of one woman's life and struggles in the post-war Italy. As Domenico Soriano, a wealthy, arrogant and selfish Neapolitan businessman, Mastroianni is on the verge of marrying a younger woman when he hears that his long time mistress, ex-prostitute Filomena, is on her deathbed. He rushes to her side and agrees to marry Filomena in hopes to soon become a widower but when she recovers "miraculously" he recognizes that her illness was only a trick. Then, in her flashbacks, we learn that she did it for the sake of her three children of whom Domenico knew nothing about and one of them (or maybe all) could be his... Mastroianni and Loren had perhaps the best on-screen chemistry ever; it is delight to see them together in this film as well as in "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" and "The Sunflowers" - little known but wonderful Soviet - Italian film, both by Vittorio De Sica. I also liked them together in Altman's "Prêt-à-Porter" (1994) aka "Ready to Wear". One scene in Marriage Italian Style should be on the list of the best ever filmed - young Filomena walks down a sidewalk in Naples to meet with Dominico and every man, regardless of his age stares at her with desire. I am a woman but I could not take my eyes off her - Cleopatra or Nefertity could've walked like that. My verdict - they don't make comedies like that anymore. 9.5/10