Profumo di donna (1974)

Profumo di donna (Scent of a woman) is a darker, crueler version of the later Americanized adaptation starring Al "HOOAH!" Pacino.

This version - the original - stars Vittorio Gassman as the blind Captain Fausto, a lecherous old goat who travels down the length of the Italian boot, drinking from his flask, heckling his minion - the resentful, boyish Giovanni (Alessandro Momo) - and sniffing the air in search of a "tall blonde with a big ass". While Giovanni huffs and sighs, Captain Fausto wields his cane like a weapon - slashing the air for obstacles or, well, passersby. As Giovanni creeps under Fausto's nose and discovers a pistol and the photo of a girl (Agostina Belli) in the latter's suitcase, their journey down to Naples begins to take on a new, ominous meaning.

While that strange combination of tenderness and raunchiness - "You think I miss seeing the Sistine Chapel?" Fausto shouts. "A big ass! That's what I miss!" - is still present in the Italian version, as is its slightly maudlin conclusion, this version also boasts a much thornier, less likable blind captain and a much frostier relationship between him and Giovanni. The relatively prudish American version - with Al Pacino as the Captain Fausto (now "Frank") and Chris O'Donnell as the Giovanni (now "Charlie") - emphasized the captain's disability as a strange sort of wild wisdom. Through Al Pacino's "HOOAH!"-ing, his classy tango dancing (just to compare, the same scene in the Italian version had Fausto tongue kissing Giovanni's girlfriend and calling her a "whore") and his general vitality, the anemic preppie Chris O'Donnell learns via the rascally blind man to live life to the fullest. Blah blah.

Fausto's quality of societal jester - i.e. his disability places him outside of society's "norm" bounds, and so he is free to break rules and thereby comment on them - is much harsher. And indeed, his hypersexuality, heavy drinking and unvarnished cruelty (think House) seem more like the desperate acts of a very angry man rather than the gentle insights into "really seeing" the world around you. That's not to say the Italian Fausto is any less a Trungpa Rinpoche-style holy fool than the American Frank. Indeed, there's a stunning scene when Fausto asks his priest cousin to bless him - his cousin then admits that he actually envies Fausto his blindness, since that "constant suffering" affords him special status in the eyes of God. He likens him to "the stupid, the ill, the innocent children".

Kind of patronizing, we thought. And kind of interesting, since the entire movie builds up this holy (tom) foolery and then offers that foolery's pearl of wisdom: that life is essentially meaningless suffering, whether you can see or not. Rather than rebelling against that suffering, once Fausto resigns himself to his complete vulnerability (emphasized ghoulishly via a clumsy, exaggerated fall) does he seem to get peace. He stops resisting. (And remember that Faust is the guy who, for ambition and knowledge and worldly stuff, exchanged any chance of everlasting peace with the devil. So this sentimental finale basically unFausts Faust.) Frank's message (apart from "HOOAH!"; did we mention we love that phrase? HOOAH!) seems to be much less existential nothingness and much more "Carpe diem!". Much less Italian, much more American.

Vittorio Gassman disappeared into this role; we could barely recognize him going all Dionysian and such when we knew him so well as a fallen bourgeois. Alessandro Momo and Agostina Belli didn't really register, both were too generically young and pretty. The priest cousin - whoever that actor was - did a great job, but he also had a great scene. Director Dino Risi used light interestingly; often blinding us or filming things in deep shade or at twilight. Great commentary on Italian regionalism, as always (the first scene in Rome has a moped driver scoot by screaming the stereotypical local slang, "Aoh! Ma va' a mori' ammazzato!" ("Go die in a homicide!")).

C'eravamo tanto amati (1974)

This may be obvious to connoisseurs of Italian cinema, but C'eravamo tanto amati (We All Loved Each Other So Much) is really great - who knew! We got it for Christmas, threw it into our Pile O' DVDs, found it months later (today), assumed it was some old school tearjerker and put it in - and what a surprise we got! This was fresh, quirky, self-deprecating, inventive, silly, sweet and intelligent. And many other descriptive words. We loved it!


Stefania Sandrelli and Vittorio Gassman dumping poor ol' Nino Manfredi. Don't worry, Nino, the PPCC will protect and love you.

We at the PPCC, for however much we like Italian films, are really philistines regarding them: we have little sense of history or significance, and only nominally recognize things like neorealismo. We just haven't watched enough Italian cinema critically to make the broad generalizations we're so comfortable making in our Hindi film reviews. But after a film like this one and the recently PPCCed La meglio gioventù, we can only say, Mamma mia, ancora! That's-a one-a SPICY MOVIE! We need-a some-a MORE, please! We want to learn more!

C'eravamo tanto amati - from our uneducated, dominantly Hollywood/Bollywood perspective - was fabulously bizarre. Breaks in the fourth wall, characters addressing the camera and communicating via "internal" spoken monologues, repeated scenes, and an irreverent sense of humor that doesn't even let the attempted suicide of one of the characters make things too grim. That's not to say this film doesn't have heart - it has a sweet, earnest vibe that forgives humans, warts and all, and highlights the ridiculous surreality of our self-made dramas.


"Should I take off my braces?" she asks. His reply: "Uhm... no."

Antonio (Nino Manfredi), Gianni (Vittorio Gassman), and Nicola (Stefano Satta Flores) are old war buddies, former partigiani - AKA guerrilla fighters in the anti-Nazi resistance in Italy during World War II. After the war, during the notoriously hard times of the 1950s, they each struggle to get by. Antonio, an easygoing working class Roman, is a male nurse. One day, he meets and falls in love with the gorgeous, northern Luciana (Stefania Sandrelli). But as soon as he introduces Luciana to his debonair friend, Gianni, he loses her to him. Then she loses Gianni when the latter meanders away, inadvertently becoming trapped by a family of rich, former Fascist "padroni" (owners) and their well-meaning, ignorant daughter Elide (Giovanna Ralli). Once this happens, Luciana quickly moves onto the intellectual, self-aggrandizing Nicola. And so on.

For a film about heartbreak, economic strife and war, it's awfully upbeat. Antonio especially has a particularly self-deprecating wit, often summarizing difficult and complex tragedies with a single, dry Romanism. "Boh," he says at the film's conclusion.

"What does that mean?!" the over-articulate Nicola demands, fuming.

It just means - boh. Whatever. In the face of the ridiculousness of life, Antonio's response - a resigned shrug - seems to be the most sensible.

And the film itself is like one big Antonio too - teasing itself and the fashionable Italian cinema which preceded it. This film - which, according to a "citation needed" Wikipedia entry, is the most influential of the commedia all'italiana films - is indeed much more like the later, bizarre tragicomedies of Lina Wertmuller and Giancarlo Giannini. It feels like a conscious break from the dreary gloom of Italian movies from the 1950s and 1960s. There's a running joke throughout the film that only the self-important Nicola fully appreciates Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thieves), a film now renowned as being the Italian neorealist film (after La dolce vita, maybe). Speaking of La dolce vita, there's also a wonderfully bizarre and self-referential sequence when Antonio and Luciana stumble upon the filming of the famous Trevi Fountain scene (complete with great cameos by Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni). It's a film making fun of other films!


OMG, that looks familiar!


Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni playing themselves.

Apart from the fun, lively narrative, we also fell in love with the four principal characters - who were uniformly bumbling and ridiculous. Nino Manfredi was especially lovable as the kindhearted Antonio. There's a very sweet scene when Antonio bumps into Luciana many years after their initial break-up. He notices a little boy hovering around her and, becoming increasingly distracted by the boy and Luciana's hands twirling the boy's hat, he eventually stammers, "Wait, excuse me, is he... is he...?" She nods with a smile. Antonio extends his hand to the boy, "My name is Antonio. What's your name?"

"Luigi," the boy replies.

Antonio turns back to Luciana, voice wavering and eyes tearful, "You named him after my mother's uncle!"


Antonio and Luciana, the early days.


Oh yeah! Mike Bongiorno also makes a cameo, huzzah! We want to be the next Mike Bongiorno.

We can't really find any criticism for this film. We enjoyed every minute of it. This was right up our alley, and we were delighted and captivated. If you too like mildly weird and silly humanistic tragicomedies, this one's a real treat.