Dramma della gelosia (tutti i particolari in cronaca) (1970)

Director:

Ettore Scola

Writers:

Agenore Incrocci (writer)
Furio Scarpelli (writer)

Release Date:

18 January 1970 (Sweden)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

A three-way love affair in the Rome of the early seventies. Construction worker Oreste and young fiancee Adelaide meet Nello...

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Marcello Mastroianni	...	Oreste
Monica Vitti	...	Adelaide
Giancarlo Giannini	...	Nello
Manuel Zarzo	...	Uto
Marisa Merlini	...	Silvana
Hércules Cortés	...	Ambleto di Meo
Fernando Sánchez Polack	...	District Head of Communist Party
Gioia Desideri	...	Adelaide's Friend
Juan Diego	...	Antonia's Son
Bruno Scipioni	...	Pizza maker
Josefina Serratosa	...	Antonia
Giuseppe Maffioli	...	Lawyer
Paola Natale	...	Flower Seller
Brizio Montinaro	...	Restaurant Night Guard
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Corrado Gaipa	...	President of tribunal

Also Known As:

Drama of Jealousy
El demonio de los celos (Spain)
Jealousy, Italian Style
The Motive Was Jealousy
The Pizza Triangle

Runtime:

France:105 min | Germany:107 min | Italy:107 min | Spain:102 min | USA:99 min | Argentina:106 min

Country:

Italy | Spain

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Sweden:11 | USA:R | Argentina:13 | West Germany:16 (f) (w)

Filming Locations:

Madrid, Spain

Company:

Dean Film

Movie Connections:

Featured in Marcello Mastroianni: mi ricordo, sì, io mi ricordo (1997)

Commedia all'italiana faces the 1970s and reaches new heights with "Pizza Triangle"

This is the passionate, tragic, acid, perversely funny story of a love triangle -- at one point, almost a ménage-à-trois -- involving bricklayer Oreste (Mastroianni in one of his very best performances, a sort of grotesque version of his character in "I Compagni"), flower-seller Adelaide (isn't it time we acknowledged Monica Vitti as THE most accomplished Italian comedienne ever? And being that gorgeous didn't hurt either) and pizzaiolo Nello (Giancarlo Giannini in a star-making role). With this film, Ettore Scola proved to be the great new voice in commedia all'italiana, a deserving heir to the maestri of this great tradition (DeSica, early Fellini, Germi, Monicelli, Risi) but adding steamier sarcasm and corrosiveness in his pitiless criticism of Italian society and its conservative mores.

We, as the audience, play a very important part here: it's to us (the invisible judge of a trial) that Oreste, Adelaide and Nello present their cases in the flashbacks that shows us the different angles of their convoluted story of friendship, love, betrayal and attempted murders/ suicides, in a sort of comedic Rashomon. The expertise of Scola's writing and the charisma of the starring trio make us care a lot for those hopeless losers, so unmistakably human.

Scola achieves a very rare thing: he uses caricature, comedic clichés and grotesqueness and raises them to refined art, craftily mixing tragedy and comedy with political overtones and social satire. This is on the same level as (and is a sort of cross between) Scola's masterpieces "C'Eravamo Tanto Amati" and "Brutti Sporchi Cattivi". You can do no wrong here: this is a delight that keeps your brain working AND your laughing muscles contracting, an achievement that sounds almost paradoxical by today's moronic, puerile standards of film comedy.