|||||| The Planet of Great Moviez ||||||||: Profumo di donna ( 1974)

An army cadet accompanies an irascible, blind captain on a week-long trip from Turin to Naples. The captain, Fausto, who wants no pity, brooks no disagreement, and charges into every situation, nicknames the youth Ciccio , and spends the next few days ordering him about and generally behaving badly in public. In Rome, Fausto summons a priest to ask for his blessing; in Naples, where Fausto joins a blind lieutenant for drinking and revelry, the two soldiers talk quietly and seriously about "going through with it." Also in Naples is Sara, in love with Fausto, but treated cruelly by him. What do the blind soldiers plan? Can Sara soften Fausto's hardened heart?

Scent of a Woman
Dino Risi is one of the most important directors in Italian cinema, from the Fifties to the Seventies. Generally he's recognized as one of the fathers of Italian comedy ("commedia all'italiana") -the expression doesn't mean that the movies make you laugh all the time, it means that stories are a mix of happiness and bitterness, as life is. And not always there's a happy ending.

Profumo di donna is taken from a book by Giovanni Arpino. In this 1974 movie Vittorio Gassman is a blind ex military officer who makes a trip from Genova to Naples. A young boy accompanies him. Fausto -Gassman's character- has to deal with the tragedy of being blind, he wants to commit suicide...

Fausto is a man who lost everything; he can feel the presence of a woman (which explains the title Profumo di donna, in English Scent of a woman) but doesn't want to be loved for pity.
It's difficult to describe a film which has a lot of themes -friendship, aging, the drama of being different from the others. But everything is treated in a delicate and moving way, although it's not a film for making you cry.
Vittorio Gassman's performance is simply superb - he won a prize for it at the Cannes Festival in 1975.

English subtitles are my own.

Perfume de mujer
Un joven cadete de la Armada debe acompañar a un irascible capitán ciego en un largo fin de semana de viaje entre Turín y Nápoles. El capitán Fausto, bebedor y mujeriego, le dará una serie de lecciones al joven que éste no podrá olvidar.

Profumo di donna
Il capitano Fausto G., cieco in seguito a una esplosione, parte da Torino diretto a Napoli, con tappe a Genova e a Roma, in compagnia di un soldatino-studente; sembra ancor pieno di vita, ma ha in programma il suicidio. Dietro la ricerca della donna c'è quella della morte. È uno dei film che segnarono il passaggio al dramma di alcuni maestri della commedia italiana (Risi, Monicelli, Comencini) in un sagace cocktail di sarcasmo e pietà, ironia e amarezza, benché indebolito da un finale di compromesso. In questo dramma della solitudine Gassman dà una delle migliori interpretazioni del suo itinerario cinematografico.

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Profumo di donna ( 1974)

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