Ragazze d'oggi (1955)

Director:

Luigi Zampa

Writer:

Luigi Zampa (writer)

Genre:

Comedy

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Marisa Allasio	...	Anna
Paola Quattrini	...	Simonetta
Lili Cerasoli	...	Sofia
Paolo Stoppa	...	Peppino Bardellotti
Eduardo Bergamo
Mike Bongiorno	...	Sandro
Nuccia Lodigiani
Camillo Milli	...	Vannucci
Françoise Rosay	...	Brothel owner
Louis Seigner
Franck Villard	...	Armando
Bella Billa
Bella Visconti
Guido Celano
Enzo Garinei

Also Known As:

Girls of Today (International: English title)
La chasse aux marins (France)

Runtime:

98 min

Country:

Italy | France

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Carlo Ponti Cinematografica

Soundtrack:

Non si dimentica

A dubious social comedy

Widescreen and colour, no less, which was not common fare for a 1955 production with no Hollywood input, and without even any outstanding stars apart from a cameo by Françoise Rosay. But a lot of time and money obviously went on the design of this romantic comedy, especially the costume design for its three beautiful, and beautifully-dressed, lead actresses. The girls of today are the three spirited daughters of a Neapolitan widower, leading quite independent social lives in 50s Milan and determined to find their own husbands and make their own futures. Their father vaguely wants them to be happy but is largely out of touch with what they get up to, the aunt who lives with them has mighty ambitions and considers no man worth looking at if he doesn't have a house a car and social status. Obviously, this isn't an attitude that 'girls of today' would be expected to endorse, so when to begin with the eldest, Anna, declares herself in love with an educated, free-spirited, penniless translator and defies her aunt to object, any audience would go along with her. When the boyfriend turns up at the house and declares his belief in conjugal independence, in having his wife work so that she's not trapped in their marriage, and generally in equal respect for equal opinions, - thereby startling even the good-natured father - Zampa does seem to be taking a stand for modernity. Alas, the film develops this stand into a morality tale which ends with father and translator together propounding the moral superiority of True Values (by implication, theirs and only theirs) to all the women, even Anna. Authority and purity is thereby lodged in father and (future) husband, and although Anna is at this point still in agreement you wouldn't give much any more for 'equal respect' being accorded if she should ever DISagree with her Sandro - played, incidentally, by a young man who was to become the game-show king of Italian prime-time TV, if you can imagine what that means. Most of all the aim seems to be to humiliate and ridicule the middle-aged woman - not by chance an aunt and not a mother - who still has pretensions to be both attractive and respectable. There is even a tentative reconciliation, behind the young people's backs, between the 'good' father and a 'bad' one, an autocratic self-made man who destroyed his son's unsuitable match with Anna's sister Simonetta, but who may yet, probably just because he is a father, be redeemed and reconciled in extremis. So all is well, the girls of today will do what Papi says. Blech. NO despite the sometimes gorgeous images.