Viva Italia: Divorce, Italian Style (35mm)
February 28, 2024
Viva Italia! The Passion of Italian Cinema
Supreme Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni plays a Sicilian nobleman who imagines whimsical ways of getting rid of his nagging wife in order to be with his true love, played by Stefania Sandrelli. Presented on 35mm.
SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this screening.
We begin our series with a three-film tribute to the supreme Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni. Director Federico Fellini, Mastroianni's friend and collaborator (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2), said that the handsome, soft-voiced actor is "an intelligent, sensitive man, still childish, also skeptical, yet full of dreams and extraordinary nuances." Mastroianni was devoted to realizing his directors'artistic visions onscreen, and he worked with the best. In the darkly comic Divorce he's a nobleman pestered by his nagging wife (Daniela Rocca), plus he's in love with neighbor Stefania Sandrelli. What to do? If only he could catch his wife committing adultery he could commit a murder of passion, and surely the law would understand? He is Sicilian after all. Mastroianni imagines whimsical ways of getting rid of Rocca, like blasting her into space, but getting her to participate in his plans is another thing. Mastroianni's Oscar nominated, macho-satirizing performance set the whole world laughing, and Germi's screenplay took the golden statue home to Italy.
- Director: Pietro Germi
- Principal Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Stefania Sandrelli
- Country: Italy
- Year: 1961
- Running Time: 108 min.