A Garota com a Pistola

We remember the great actress from Rome, who died a short time ago, and we see that she was one of the best actresses of her time. This movie is quite funny although nothing much. It is original because it shows a woman capable of doing things that only a horrible man can do.

A typically fanciful late-sixties Italian sex comedy with a Hammond organ score and obviously post-synced dialogue in which director Mario Monicelli bounds along in hot pursuit with a zoom lens of Monica Vitti (wearing a variety of wigs and vulger sixties outfits, including a shiny black PVC coat buttoned up to the throat) as she scampers from Sicily through exotic British locations like Edinburgh, Sheffield, Bath, Elephant & Castle and finally Brighton, encountering a quirky succession of British men (Anthony Booth, Stanley Baker, Corin Redgrave) along the way.

Britain as seen through Carlo Di Palma's lens seems a cold, wintry place; none more wintry than poor old Sheffield, disposed of as usual as a hideous concrete jungle (the location scouts again ignoring it's many parks and the Yorkshire Dales within easy reach).

The first 15 minutes of this are just classic, with Vitti being 'kidnapped' - and a little too ready for seduction, even as she moans "I am cold as marble, you are kissing a dead woman!" The rest of the film has several fine comedic sequences, with Vitti ready to call out every 'putana'who does not meet her strict moral code as she searches for the man who betrayed her. I gave it 8 stars as I had such a good time watching it!

As my review needs more lines, I can mention that La Vitti won a few awards for her performance, and that the film itself was nominated for Best Foreign Film. So while the costumes and concepts make this something of a period piece, don't think it is not make worthy of viewing. Very enjoyable!

After looking for a long time I was finally able to get a decent VHS copy of this movie which I had never seen.For me it completes my collection of all of Stanley Baker's theatrical movies.

Sicilian Monica Vitti is "wronged" by her boyfriend who then decamps from her to London.Monica gets a pistol and pursues him with revenge on her mind.

The movie is then a series of encounters with various characters who help her find then lose then find the debaucher.Stanley Baker, who turns up about halfway through the movie as a surgeon is her last connection. The denouement is a little twisty and provides a satisfactory ending.

This is an odd film in which to find Baker. He was a major star but he probably just did it for the money if he wasn't being offered more substantial roles. As a point of interest, the first full length biography of Baker is up for preorder at Amazon UK.

There's a wonderful surreal character to Mario Monicelli's comedy La Ragazza con la Pistola (The Girl with a Gun), particularly in his fanciful depiction of the strict moral codes of life in a little Sicilian village which exiles a young woman for spending a night with a man. The remainder of the film as Assunta travels across Scotland and England in an effort to track down the terrified Vincenzo with a pistol in her handbag to restore her lost honour, is somewhat episodic and variable, but retains its colourful character and comic touch. Principally however, it's only able to remain as engaging as it does thanks to the irresistible presence of Monica Vitti.

The spectacular opening scenes are actually filmed not in Sicily, but Polignano in Puglia, the geometric structures of its white buildings perched on a crumbling rocky cliff face that seems to be on the verge of toppling into the sea. It does give the surrealism of life in the village an almost Kafkaesque edge that the director exploits marvellously. Despite strict segregation of the sexes and a tight guard, Assunta is abducted by men from Vincenzo's all-male dancing school. Assunat believes that Vincenzo has been watching her through her window, but Vincenzo tells them they got the wrong girl, that he was more interested in Assunta's larger-sized cousin Concetta. "Could be worse", Vincenzo reckons however, and doesn't see any reason why he should let the operation go to waste.

Vincenzo however gets more than he bargained for, as Assunta seems a little more experienced and not as retiring as he might have liked. Knowing that the potential consequence of spending the night with Assunta is marriage, Vincenzo packs his bags and flees the country. Assunta, abandoned, is greeted with wails and laments from the entire village, who come out in numbers to bemoan her lost honour. She is cast out from the town, but not without a pistol in her bag and an address in Scotland where Vincenzo might be found. The strict codes of Sicilian honour demand nothing less.

Vincenzo soon gets wind of Assunta being on his tail, and skips out of the Capri Italian restaurant in Edinburgh fairly quickly and flees across the length of England. Assunta, an avenging angel dressed in black - particularly fetching in sunglasses and black plastic Mac - is however never far behind, always on his tail. Along the way, Assunta meets various men who fall in love with her and experiences all the colour of England in the swinging sixties as well as the industrial greyness of Sheffield, and even ends up on an anti-Vietnam protest in London. La Ragazza con la Pistola eventually runs out of steam in Brighton, but there are plenty of moments of comedy and glamour along the way.