ALFREDO ALFREDO Movie Review

Dustin Hoffman plays a shy, nervous, continuously sweating bank clerk who manages to marry the ravishingly pretty Stefania Sandrelli, discovering too late that what should have been his dream come true—his beautiful bride's unquenchable sexual appetite—has become his worst nightmare. Pietro Germi specialized in a highly popular subcategory of domestic Italian comedy, the zenith of which he probably reached a decade earlier with the vulgar but irresistibly funny Divorce—Italian Style (which starred Marcello Mastroianni and featured Sandrelli). Alfredo, Alfredo is considerably less inventive and outrageous, and though then-35-year-old Hoffman made a surprisingly convincing Italian nebbish, he was no Mastroianni. Pauline Kael wrote upon the film's release that she found the dubbed voice of Hoffman (that's right, his subtitled dialogue was dubbed by an Italian actor) gave the picture “an extra dimension.” Be that as it may, it's nearly as disconcerting as hearing a strange actor's voice come out of Mel Gibson's mouth in the American version of Mad Max.

NEXT STOP … Divorce—Italian Style, Seduced and Abandoned, The Pizza Triangle (A Drama of Jealousy)

1972 (R) 97m/C IT Dustin Hoffman, Stefania Sandrelli, Carla Gravina, Clara Colosimo, Daniela Patella, Dulio Del Prete; D: Pietro Germi; W: Pietro Germi, Leo Benvenuti; C: Aiace Parolini; M: Carlo Rustichelli. VHS, Closed Caption PAR