Film Review: Seduced and Abandoned (1964)

This film is remarkably similar in theme to the novel Bell' Antonio, which I reviewed in August. Both are about the corrosive effects of Sicilian codes of honour and machismo. The novel takes a look at an arranged marriage that falls apart, while Seduced, made in 1964, is about various frustrated attempts to arrange a marriage.

Seduced begins during a siesta in the affluent Ascalone household. Everyone's asleep except Peppino Califano, who's engaged to Matilde Ascalone, and Agnese, Don Vincenzo Ascalone's youngest (15) and most beautiful daughter. Peppino and Agnese steal away to a deserted corner of the large house and the deed is done. It's not clear if they love or even like each other, but they definitely succumb to a mutual lust, with Peppino leading the charge.

Sure enough, Agnese is left pregnant by her one tryst with Peppino and that begins a comic war between Vincenzo and the Califano family. Vincenzo wants Peppino to marry Agnese to save his family's honour. Peppino counters that he doesn't want to marry a girl who can be seduced so easily; it clearly means she's a whore at heart. The battle takes some twists and turns, and in the end the Califanos find themselves being forced to beg Vincenzo for his daughter. And along the way there's been an attempted honour killing and what can only be called a ritual kidnapping. A wedding finally takes place, but it's left nothing but scorched earth behind it and no future prospects for happiness.

This film is described as a comedy, but only in the sense that it's a ruthless satire of Sicilian culture. There are some laughs, but what's to be enjoyed here is the meticulous examination of the hypocrisy and idiocy of Sicilian concepts of honor and pride. None of the characters come away looking good or innocent, and the final shot in the film is a brutal but effective commentary on the pointlessness of upholding honour. Pietro Germi was the director, and he did an excellent job of keeping a nice balance between acidic satire and silliness.

The cast is excellent, led by Saro Urzi as Vincenzo. You may recognize him from The Godfather where he played the father of the Sicilian girl Michael Corleone takes as his wife. Choosing Urzi for this role was clearly a tip of the hat to Seduced and Abandoned from Francis Ford Coppola. The cinematography is also good, and the soundtrack by Carlo Rustichelli sounds remarkably like something Ennio Morricone might have created. I wonder who influenced who.

Sicilian codes of honour don't have much contemporary resonance, but the film can still be enjoyed for the sheer craft and pleasure and wit that went into making it. There's a film version of Bell' Antonio and I'm going to have to hunt it down to compare and contrast.

TV Review: Detective Montalbano

Luca Zingaretti as Commissario Montalbano

I'd heard of author Andrea Camilleri and his Commissario Montalbano mysteries, but until last week I didn't know they'd been filmed for Italian television. Twenty-two of them, no less. The library recently got the whole collection on DVD with English sub-titles and I've been working my way through them. They're excellent.

Putting aside their quality as mysteries for the moment, the thing about this series that really stands out is the craftsmanship with which they've been made. All ten episodes I've seen so far look great. The cinematography is absolutely first-rate. Two cinematographers have worked on the series and they both make great use of single-source, natural lighting for their interior shots. And an equal amount of care has been put into set design with the careful choice of colours to complement the cinematography. The locations? Let's just say you'll be booking a vacation to Sicily after seeing only a few episodes. The soundtrack also deserves praise both for its quirkiness and its unobtrusiveness. Some TV shows, notably Dr. Who, give the audience an unrelenting earbashing with bombastic scores. In sum, Montalbano looks and sounds fantastic.

As mysteries, this series relies more on characterization and pitch-perfect casting to carry the weight rather than clever, devious plotting. The stories are always interesting, often intriguing, but more for the characters they introduce than the plots. One episode, for example, "borrows" the plot from Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders. That plot is one of the most original in crime fiction, but by now it's been lifted by just about every crime writer going, and most viewers are quite familiar with it.

The actors, led by Luca Zingaretti as Montalbano, are uniformly excellent. I get the feeling that the producers have tried to use local non-professional talent, because some of the smaller roles are filled by people who have, shall we say, non-professional faces but a great deal of enthusiasm. This is all for the best because the glossy look of the shows is balanced out by cast members who look like they've been pulled off the streets and fields of Sicily. But Zingaretti is very much the star of the show. He looks and acts tough without coming across as vicious, and he's equally adept at looking foolish or awkward when the story calls for it. He's in virtually every second of every show, and it's a testament to his acting ability and appeal that he never wears out his welcome.

If you try and order the DVDs from Amazon keep in mind that for some reason they're listed as Detective Montalbano, not Inspector or Commissario. If your taste in TV cops runs to something grittier and French, check out my review of Braquo, a nasty but entertaining mini-series about some ruthless Paris cops. The trailer below is for the most recent episodes of Montalbano.

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Film Review: Un Maladetto Imbroglio