IL BELL'ANTONIO Movie Review

Handsome Antonio

One of the high points in the great career of the irreplaceable Marcello Mastroianni was his immensely poignant portrayal of Antonio Magnano, a man who decides to stop bedding down all the “easy” women of the lower classes who have taken up so much of his life and, instead, finally embraces the sanctity of the Catholic church's teachings by marrying a well-bred, “pure,” religious girl (Claudia Cardinale). With her, and for the first time in his life, Antonio is impotent. This is not, however, another of the many broad social comedies (many of them wonderful) that Italy produced in the 1960s; Il Bell'Antonio is instead a delicate and razor-sharp illustration of one man's inability to reconcile that age-old dichotomy—the good, publicly proclaimed, sacred love that the church teaches, versus the secret, “profane” love that only “bad” girls enjoy. It's like the response of Woody Allen when he was asked if sex was dirty. “Yes, if you're doing it right,” he replied. (To bastardize Groucho Marx, while Antonio is willing to be a member of the holy matrimony club, his member isn't.) The screenplay by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Gino Vissentini refuses to ridicule Antonio. His anguish is treated with respect and intelligence, for it is the very real hypocrisy and cultural/religious need to compartmentalize that is under the microscope here. But thanks to Mastroianni, the issues always assume human proportions. In the recent, authorized, enormously engaging screen biography of Mastroianni titled I Remember, the actor speaks with fondness and pride of his heartbreaking and revelatory performance in this film. He was justified in that pride. Marcello will be missed.

NEXT STOP … Big Deal on Madonna Street, Divorce—Italian Style, Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember

1960 115m/C IT Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinal, Pierre Brasseur, Tomas Milian, Rina Morelli; D: Mauro Bolognini; W: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gino Vissentini; C: Armando Nannuzzi; M: Piero Piccioni. VHS KIV, FCT