In a recent review, I bellied about the lack of guts of a 60's black comedy called "How to Murder Your Wife". A few days later, I discovered this Italian made comedy that has those guts and more, not afraid to show the difference between a lady and a female and the boys who turn into men learning the difference. That boy/man is Dustin Hoffman, playing an innocent most desperate for love who unfortunately finds out to be careful what you wish for. Set up on a blind date by his best friend, he finds himself the intended victim of his best friend's supposed girlfriend who basically bullies him into a relationship and a subsequent marriage of horror. At the beginning of the film, he is in the process of divorcing her and describes her to the audience as a genuine witch. Flashbacks prove this. She practically stalks him (even worse than Jessica Walter did Clint Eastwood in "Play Misty For Me" and Glenn Close did to Michael Douglas in "Fatal Attraction"), calling him every day non-stop both at work and in the middle of the night, exhausting him every step of the way. Yet, he marries her anyway. It is obvious that this woman wanted to marry someone she felt she could dominate, but there is a tiger lurking under Hoffman's sweet kitten. That is what makes this film so darn funny.Hoffman gives a Chaplin like performance as the suckered young man who finally wakes up. Stefania Sandrelli isn't afraid at all to explore the dark side of her character, Maria Rosa Cavaroni in Sbisà. Every time Hoffman says "Maria Rosa", it is with a touch of acid, as if he was spitting venom. Like the old saying, "There's a Thin Line Between Love and Hate", and as Beatrice Arthur added to her TV husband on "Maude", "and you're crossing it!". When Sandrelli destroys Hoffman's downstairs room, she reminds me of Barbara Steele in "Black Sunday" in her white witch like nightgown. Carla Gravina is most attractive as the next woman in Hoffman's life, a completely different character who may tower over Hoffman but proves to be a more amiable partner. This apparently takes place during the time the Roman Catholic Church lost its power to prevent divorce in Italy. There is a very funny visual concerning Sandrelli's "hysterical pregnancy" that is almost a just reward to set Hoffman's character free. The ending has an ironic twist that is the icing on the cake.

Pietro Germi is one of the unsung heroes of the film world. "Divorce Italian Style" catapulted him from total obscurity to partial obscurity, at least for a while. In his native Italy, naturally, he is highly regarded, considered, quite rightly, one of the best. But even then, once rarely hears Germi's name in the same breath with Fellini or De Sica, Rosellini or Antonioni. He was a sort of Preston Sturges. He ventured into varied genres in a masterful and innovative way. Think "Divorce Italian Style" and "Un Maledeto Inbroglio" "Seduced and Abandoned" and "The Birds, The Bees and The Italians" Different universes, always darkish, always funny, always brilliant. Marcello Mastroiani in Germi's hands created a miraculous character in "Divorce Italian Style" Saro Urzi was unbelievable in "Seduced and Abandoned". In "Alfredo Alfredo" everything seems a bit off. It's not the Germi I have come to know and love, I mean, not quite. I detect the presence of a virus in his system, I wonder if it is the, then, well known and feared Hoffman decease. It drove directors insane. I had heard of some pretty nutty behavior on the set of "Agatha" that lovely picture directed by Michael Apted. Here you sense that Germi is not at his freer. You sense some kind of hurry and frustration, never before evident in a Germi film. I'm of course, merely speculating but I can't help wonder that if this is a smaller Petri, is due, in great part, to the bigger star. I suppose we'll never know so don't bother, run to your nearest "smart" video place and get all of Pietro Germi's films pre-Alfredo Alfredo.

Dustin Hoffman plays that nebbiscio italiano. He's the sort of person who spends his evenings at home with his father watching slideshows. Of his best friend having a good time.Dustin tends to mug a bit, but he's fine in general. You tend to forget that you're not hearing him speak Italian. That trick is pulled off easily enough; most of the "dialogue" is done in voice-over by Dustin's character. He doesn't actually have to say much more than the occasional "Pronto!" on the telephone.Director Pietro Germi has an uncanny ability to populate his films with beautiful young women. The lovely Cosetta Greco comes to mind. Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale are just average by Germi standards -- nothing special. Here Dustin's co-star is Stefania Sandrelli, the stunning Stefania Sandrelli. Stunning by Germi standards. She's more ravishing here than she is in his earlier "Seduced and Abandoned", another farce from 1964. She makes me think a little of a Catholic Elsa Zylberstein with a cleft chin. "Stefania! Stefania!" the film could have been called.Writer/director Germi then plays matchmaker, putting the stammering junior bank employee, Dustin, together with Stefania, the kohl-eyed Venus of hot-blooded pharmacists, creating a classic Italian sex farce.This film does not have a good reputation, but it produced plenty of big laughs this evening at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Admittedly, it was a Pietro Germi Festival audience, many of them Italian speakers. Hardly a tough crowd. And it was the full-length original cut. The humour is very broad and could easily fail miserably on television.The film shifts gears midway through, grinds gears really. Stefania, the angel-madonna-whore, turns out to be a "strega" as they like to say in Italian, and the film turns into a semi-serious pro-divorce romance cum drama cum political manifesto on the necessity for Italian legislative reform. And all a little unexpectedly. Do we detect some directorial autobiography intruding into the story at this point?Tonight I was expecting something extremely bad, something along the lines of Dustin's other adventure in Italian filmmaking, "Madigan's Million" (1968), but I got something considerably better than that. The treasure hunt sequence is rather cute.But let the viewer beware.