Drame de la jalousie

When l watched this movie in early 1984 I' wasn't able and ready to understand how complicate is an Italian comedy at all, they talk louder, so many facial expressions, body language, whatever they are different, so that time l'd gave a low grade 4/10, now on first revisiting on DVD l've increase a little to 7.5/10, still is very low underrated by IMDb's users, well l've to confess that the movie didn't make my head, maybe a dated movie, Ettore Scola was a fine director like in Brutti, Sporchi e Cattive that is really good movie, even often of dubious taste humor!!!

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First watch: 1984 / How many: 3 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7.5.

This is one of the best Italian comedies ever made. Known both as A DRAMA OF JEALOUSY and THE PIZZA TRIANGLE, it is an engrossing farce about a love triangle in modern Rome. Bricklayer Marcello Mastroianni meets flower-seller Monica Vitti at a political demonstration. He decides to ditch his fat, older wife for her. All goes well until a pizza, in the shape of a heart, arrives. It is sent to the girl by a young pizza-chef, played by Giancarlo Giannini. The pizza man becomes Vitti's lover, and poor Marcello goes mad with jealousy and attempts suicide, as do each of the other two at some point in this hysterical soap opera. The three lead performers, among the best that the Italian cinema has ever had to offer, are magnificent, as is the direction and comic timing by Ettore Scola, whose DOWN AND DIRTY this would make an appropriate companion-piece to. One could call this movie "commedia all'italiana" with peppers, mushrooms, and cheese.

I loved seeing this at MoMA on 10/20/11. We first meet Monica Vitti & Marcello Mastriani at the closing down of a small ramshackle street fair/carnival in an ugly empty lot in Rome. She is urging the ride operator to give a longer experience & he has drank a bit too much after helping to tear down some of the exhibits & falls asleep awaking to Monica kissing on him. A romance begins amongst piles of plastic garbage & flies while he continues to go home to a wife who appears to be his mother. Flashbacks to recreating a crime for detectives take us back to the florid romantic affair complete with lush orchestrations featuring that electronic harpsichord so popular during this early 70's time period. What follows is a charming absurdly funny at times interesting story told in fascinating narrative involving characters turning to talk to us in the audience in order to inform us of different aspects of character & story that we otherwise wouldn't know - sometimes in theatrical spotlights - other times in extreme close-up. I particularly liked some of the sped up film & over amplified sound effects, esp. physical hits which gives the film that "slapstick" crazy kind of absurd playfulness. Other online reviews can give further insights into this enjoyable piece. I would say that this one is prime pickings for remake since it's distribution has been inconsistent & spotty at best.

The Pizza Triangle is a cute enough Italian romantic comedy with some really outlandish touches around the center and a nicely scuzzy character played by the normally smooth Marcello Mastriani. These last two things would probably be trimmed tho (including its ending) would it have been a bigger hit in Italy and then remade for America so maybe its good it wasn't remade...but then again most people would have also heard of this and it'd be much more widely available to watch today as well so maybe that's not a good thing then.

Monica Vitti wildly overplays the fun loving/fast living woman at the center of the love triangle. She spots Marcello Mastriani not as the handsome man you normally see but as a drunk guy passed out on the street and instantly falls in love with him (i know but its a movie!) each one is sure they've seen each other before in a shop and were attracted to each other then so when she spots him laying in that gutter he's certainly pleased to wake up and see her standing over him. Unfortunately for her--he ends up being a wildly jealous boar who is prone to fits of both the drinking and temper kind and is soon turning her attentions to the swooning pizza maker in the little eatery that Mastriani keeps taking her to. The pizza maker played by a rather youngish Giancarlo Gianni woos her right under Marcello's nose with a slice of pizza in the shape of a heart---its a very cute scene when Vitti gets the heart shaped slice of pizza looks up and sees Gianni staring at her--its one of those meet cute scenes that would totally be at home in a big Hollywood romance (which is why i'm surprised this wasn't redone quite honestly) and while Vitti and her pizza maker start cuddling up Marcello starts questioning himself and his ability to hold a relationship and generally being a mope--except for when he's throwing one of his fits. Eventually he and the pizza chef (who already knew each other cause well Marcello eats his food) decide to try and share Monica Vitti--and as anyone who's ever seen Vitti in her prime can attest--half a Vitti is better then no Vitti at all.

The attempts at Jules and Jilm like comedy don't really mesh with the kind of angry, self righteous character that had been Mastriani's character up to that point, and you can pretty much guess where the film goes once the 2 guys decide to try and share Vitti. The movie doesn't quite live up to the first 5 or 10 minutes as a whole. When you see that sequence of Vitti at the fair and spotting Mastriani and then Mastriani seeing her--you think OK this is going to be very well filmed and is going to be passionate as all get out. It doesn't really pan out that way and not because of Mastriani's rather bitter character--its more because the film's attempts at humor are just too over the top to take seriously---Mastriani and Vitti share a fly together (mastriani's character is so filthy at the beginning that he keeps doing battle with the same fly--who Vitti then calls "our fly" and indeed whenever she starts to feel Mastriani's presence--you hear the fly buzzing on the soundtrack and sometimes see it actually flying around the screen as well--its a neat touch but one that's also irritating the more times it happens) Vitti's character herself is so over the top and so fickle--i personally stopped caring about which of the 2 suitors she's going to end up with long before she actually makes a decision (and then promptly changes her mind a couple more times for good measure) The film was enjoyable enough--its certainly pretty to look at for the most part--but the character's behavior and the fact that everything is done in these big broad strokes makes the rest of the film not as good as it could've been....the way Vitti carries on i would've thought that this was a role that Sophia Loren had turned down quite honestly--it wouldn't be hard to see why Loren would of turned this one down--the character that Vitti's playing is nowhere near the head strong, self sufficient larger then life characters that Loren had come to fame playing, and that's part of the main problem of the movie itself.

Awesome movie. I had never before watched an italian comedy but this one impressed me very much. The way that Ettore Scola deals with the tragic themes of the film is absolutely remarkable. By a use of the brechtian detachment he at first makes you laugh at horrible things such as suicide and conjugal violence while at the same time reminding you that what you are seeing is a film by constantly breaking the fourth wall and then at the end of the movie he makes the audience feel absolutely uncomfortable and guilty for indulging themselves in the humor of the film as he points out that these are not laughing matters and actual things that happen. I also love the not monogamous undertone this one has and i can't help but thinking that the director implies that monogamy is outdated and one of the sources of violence against women. One thing that in a way validates this argument is the fact that Ettore Scola casts Monica Vitti in this, the same Monica Vitti famous for L'avventura and La notte, both films that deal with some of the same issues and always with the thought that maybe we would be better off if we renewed our morals (that by the way was sort of a obsession of Antonioni at the time, just watch his interviews). Anyway it's a film and you can interpret it in whichever way you like to, i'm just here to say that it is a great, funny, beautifully shot, amazingly acted ( i absolutely love Monica Vitti in this), and amazingly scored and for those reasons, even if the politics in this don't interest you, you should see it regardless.