Il bell’Antonio

After years in Rome, Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni) returns to Catania in his late 20s, where his father Alfio (Pierre Brasseur) has decided that the time to marry him off has arrived. The ostentatiously celebrated dream wedding with Barbara (Claudia Cardinale), who is selected by Alfio because of her parents’ wealth, is ill-fated despite their mutual affection. One year after the wedding, Barbara’s father wants to annul the marriage via the archbishop because Antonio still hasn’t consummated it. Made directly after Fellini’s La dolce vita, which brought Marcello Mastroianni international fame and brought him the lasting image of the Latin lover, he now played an impotent man whose lack of masculine vigor brings disgrace to his Sicilian family. Mauro Bolognini, with whom Claudia Cardinale shot five films, adapted Vitaliano Brancati’s novel in collaboration with Pier Paolo Pasolini, who wrote the screenplay. “In Bolognini’s films, I always played a sort of man-killing monster, dangerous and castratory.” (CC) (hjf)