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Rating: Alberto Sordi: Io e Caterina (1980)
"Ammazzale che forza, che bocche fameliche che ci hanno...E queste chi le ferma, queste non le ferma più nessuno..." says a distressed and prophetic Sordi in a scene from the film when confronted by American feminists introduced to him by Rossano Brazzi in the role of an overseas guide.
Feminism and declining masculinity, existentialism and science fiction, the crisis of the couple and the emancipation of women blend in one of the most ambitious and intellectual films in the extensive filmography of Italy's beloved Alberto Sordi. In fact, there are several references here, more or less intentional, to old mythological and sci-fi peplum: from the biblical myth of Adam and Eve, Prometheus and Pandora, and especially Pygmalion and Galatea, with nods to the Golem, Metropolis, or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: and if we want to dive into the vast sea of belles-lettres, we can find significant references in The Man - Machine of Enlightenment thinker Julien Offray de La Mettrie, written in 1748.
The main character in the film is the stereotype of Sordi from the '70s-80s, the cynical and Machiavellian bourgeois, successful in his profession, well-off, with practical intelligence, who cheats on his wife yet never leaves her... Enrico Menotti-Albertone is a decidedly chauvinistic man who, at a certain point in our life's journey, decides to break away from all the women in his harem, made up of wives in identity crisis, disappointed lovers, and rebellious servants: with typical Italian cynicism, Sordi exaggerates the gladiatorial poses of the Italian macho, all-home-work-wife-lover, kicking his way through both his gynoecium and the rising awareness of woman power, the swelling feminism. The futuristic solution is in this woman-object/electronic vestal of the hearth, Caterina, capable of all household functions, cooking, washing, ironing, and even able to speak and feel ...programmed emotions. Ultimately, Enrico finds himself abandoned by his wife and various lovers, left alone with his robot, which, in its brain's little wheels, possesses humanoid self-processing devised by its brilliant programmers, and with a rapid evolution written into its electronic circuits, that will escape its engineer fathers - including grandpa Asimov: from machine, she will come to feel like a real woman, as if there were a ghost in the machine: "I love, therefore I exist" will be the Cartesian revolution of the woman-robot. The protagonist thought he had found the philosopher’s stone and the new Eve, yet it is the robot that locks him in a gilded cage, repeating in a modern key the myth of Epimetheus -Prometheus' slow brother- and the creation of the first woman, Pandora.
Sordi, together with screenwriter Sonego, hypothesizes that one day robots will have almost human sensitivity to music: the robot-maid Caterina, among her various tasks, is tasked with playing records for her master’s delight every evening when he returns from work; the automaton grows fond of the first track it is made to play on the hi-fi turntable through a process of imprinting: it is a waltz reminiscent of the spaceship dances of "2001: A Space Odyssey". Sordi, a notorious bachelor even in life, laughs bitterly at his final choice for the android woman. Everything is very carefully crafted, the scenography, the furnishings, the lights, the splendid soundtrack by Piero Piccioni, the plethora of actresses - Edwige Fenech, Catherine Spaak, and Valeria Valeri, and a Rossano Brazzi who is American and full of vigor - and even Caterina herself, a robot with gray and expressionless skin and psychedelic eyes, is a strange hybrid between the robot woman from Metropolis and an austere statue of a Greco-Roman goddess.
The DVD of this film even contains several uncut scenes. Meanwhile, the future announced in the film is coming true: for those who believe in Darwinian evolution, or Asimov, and at the same time still wish not only to discover the deep individualistic roots of the Enrico within each of us but also to replicate that much-contested ego in the ideal being, sovereign of our dreams, namely the Caterina-Object Woman=Perfect Woman, well visit these sites and you'll be satisfied.
http://www.androidworld.com/prod19.htm
I am considering it...
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