Ettore Scola
Dramma della gelosia (tutti i particolari in cronaca)

THE REVIEW

Drama of Jealousy is a masterpiece and if it's not, it is certainly one of my favorite Italian films ever, perhaps it's even on my ideal podium along with La strada and well, I have to think about it.

But you understand from the beginning that it's a masterpiece.

Vitti about the kicks in the butt that go round and round and round and Mastroianni, exhausted, thrown on a pile of paper dozes off, she sees him and the spark ignites.

This sequence is sublime. Adelaide the florist sees Oreste and turns the merry-go-round and us with it, and it's from Adelaide's expressions, getting more eloquent with every turn, that for her it's love at first sight and for Oreste, it will be the same.

And it’s just here that I realized Mastroianni was great, oh yes, because in many other famous films from La dolce vita to Il bell’Antonio, from La notte to Le notti bianche, Marcello, not that he always played the same role, I would be unfair to claim that, but more or less you always saw him and not a character… at least that's my take on it.

This time, however, you see Oreste Nardi, a communist bricklayer in his 45s in 1970s Italy, the years of protest, of demonstrations, of strikes, of charges.

Oreste with his disheveled curls, unkempt, shabby, slightly slow, with that twitch in the eye… and it was a Palme d'Or at Cannes as best actor…

Oreste, during a demonstration, will meet a comrade, the Tuscan pizza maker Nello Serafini, a young Giancarlo Giannini already very talented and Monica Vitti (Adelaide the florist) will fall in love with him and the drama will explode…

It's not ideal to repeat myself but again I note how Italian films were conceived many years ago. How they were studied in every detail. It’s not just a great director and great actors. It's also the film's writing: from dialogues to lines, you laugh and cry without half measures, from the things that happen (beyond the celebratory words of nothingness – cit.) from the narrative twists, to the plot twists up to the heartbreaking finale, from the soundtrack by Trovajoli that fully characterizes and integrates with the film. Try to watch again the sequence of Oreste and Adelaide playing and running happily on the beach.

...Acchiappeme!

RATING: 9