Bell' Antonio

You realise that millennia of civilisation have been quite useless if the functioning of a whole community ultimately depends on whether a man can have an erection or not! The subject of Mauro Bolognini's movie Il Bell'Antonio – male impotence – would be audacious in 2006, let alone in 1960. Yet here, it's treated with unflinching honesty, one that surprised me for 1960. No euphemisms, no sensationalism, no malicious elbow-nudging, nor sentimental melodrama, but a heart-on-the-sleeve openness which also allows its long-suffering hero to maintain his dignity through a fierce portrait of a ruthlessly paternalistic society. This is all done without the aid of a single sex-scene, which IMO would have been redundant.

The movie shows us upper-class Sicily in the late 1950s (though actually, it's based upon a novel set in the 1930s – Fascist-era Italy). This is a society in which appearing is the essence of being and the accepted norm are arranged marriages between the children of the richest families, celebrated by the entire town in the same way as Prince Charles and Diana Spencer's was back in the early 80s. As is the case with the best classic Italian movies, Il Bell'Antonio couples bitterness/fierce social satire with comedy/humour seamlessly. Superb leads in the form of the timeless Marcello Mastroianni and the divine Claudia Cardinale, impeccably playing an unpleasant character for once, give the movie extra depth, beauty and soulfulness. Claudia is Barbara Puglisi, the "golden girl" that Antonio is expected to marry, the daughter of one of the richest families on the island and a virginal social-climber of the most conventional, blinkered, obtusely stubborn kind. The even greater tragedy is that despite their marriage having been arranged by their families, Antonio really falls for her very badly.

Marcello Mastroianni, who neither as an actor nor as a man remotely deserved to be considered the typical "Latin lover" type that Hollywood producers wished to market him as, plays the titular lead, the "beautiful" Antonio Magnano. On the verge of 30, in his prime as far as looks, health and opportunities are concerned, Antonio has just returned to his native Sicilian city of Catania after having lived in Rome for three years. We very quickly gather that Antonio is from an upper class Sicilian family, is the apple of his father and mother's eye, and something of a superstar in the whole of Catania, where his family is well-known and respected. He is adored by women, who believe him to be an irresistible seducer, a Casanova with hundreds of notches on his bed-post. He is also courted by important men, all dying to act as his patrons in some prestigious profession or the other. Women's heads make 90-degree turns when he walks into a room, and older ladies gasp in wonder at his handsomeness from their balconies when he walks past them, fantasising that he may become their son-in-law. Antonio's father is played by Pierre Brasseur, who receives much praise in reviews of the movie. In my opinion, he is actually the least credibly cast actor in this movie, losing out to Rina Morelli who plays his wife, Antonio's mother (she really comes into her own in a memorable "showdown" scene between herself and Claudia Cardinale in a church, and in the second half of the movie generally). On the other hand, so many of Brasseur's expressions and mannerism betray a blatant Frenchness, rather than a credible Italianness, or even better, a Sicilianness.

Mr Magnano Senior swells with pride at the very thought of his son's alleged sexual prowess and reputation. He pretty much bases much of the reasons for boosting his family's public image precisely on Antonio being able to continue the virile oeuvre started by himself, in his youthful days, all over Sicily! With such a premise, you just know that the movie's dramatic climax is going to be the ruinous fall from glory experienced by the poor Antonio, who seemingly carries the weight of the whole of Sicily's expectations on his all too human shoulders right from the start! It's as if this poor man were expected to lift the whole island up with his erection. You don't expect the extent of the tyranny of such a patriarchal society on its male children. The story of the dishonoured girl cast out of her society certainly finds a male equivalent in Il Bell'Antonio.

Also worthy of note is the Cuban actor Tomas Milian playing Edoardo, Antonio's cousin, the only sane, rational and detached voice among a chorus of shrill scandal-mongers. It's thanks to this character that we get to hear Antonio finally speak at the end of the movie, telling us his first-hand experience as an impotent Sicilian man catastrophically fallen from glory. I do wonder if before or since this movie, such an honest and charitable, as well as credible psychological study of male sexual problems has ever been filmed - perhaps in part only in Sex, Lies and Videotape. The conclusion of Antonio's story exemplifies the bitterest and most satirical form of so-called "happy ending" – if the movie weren't already so good overall, the ending would be worth the watch alone! For any fan of classic Italian cinema, this will be a rare treat indeed. If you love Mastroianni, you simply cannot afford to miss this. And for any fan of cinema generally… ditto.

The literary source the movie is based upon, the Sicilian writer Vitaliano Brancati's novel of the same title, furthermore lends itself perfectly to this dual mood of fierce social satire and classic Italian comedy. Few men of letters have pinpointed the true natural of latter-day Southern Italian machismo as well as Brancati. Cliché-free, with such an eye for the absurd, the comical, the down-right frightening and angering, I highly recommend not only Il Bell'Antonio, but also all of Vitaliano's major novels: it wasn't just Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and his novel The Leopard who evocatively captured a long-gone Sicily in the written form.

Released in the same year at La Dolce Vita (1960), Il bell; Antonio (Handsome Antonio) is a hidden gem for any Marcello Mastroianni fan. In fact, due to the popularity of La Dolce Vita, Marcello's performance in Handsome Antonio has been somewhat lost in time due to this. A forlorn romantic, doleful and heartsick in many ways, Antonio has a condition where a modern audience would simply put him in the category of having ED or downright being a homosexual in denial. For an audience of 1960, let alone a Sicilian audience, the answer is not that easy. This movie has more to do about the Tyranny of Italian patriarchy as well as the control the Church had over society and law. The movie is a betrayal of society outside a relationship between a man and a woman. What the neighbors think and the story a family must tell to reflect in good standings is more important than true love. This is a great social drama set in 1960's Italian world where being a romantic can cause your family great pain. The economic structure of marrying up has been a goal of every Italian family since the fall or Rome. Here it is subject to not only being lucky, but handsome and available. Antonio struggles to be all 3 as his heart tells him different. Il bell 'Antonio has no hidden message - it's about a boy trying to be a man in a world where all the adults are children.

So much of the buildup to this film is about masculine vigor - playing around with as many women as possible without wearing the horns (becoming cuckolded) oneself. The main character's father talks openly about how virile his own father and grandfather were, "lions" with women, and so he understands his son's reputation for being a womanizer (Marcello Mastroianni). In the son's single life in Rome we've seen women passed around as playthings at a posh party among the elite, and to everyone's mocking, there's a character unattracted to women, turning his head away from a kiss, and who we're told has been cheated on often in his marriage, undoubtedly signals for him being gay. When the father arranges a marriage for him to a beautiful and rich woman (Claudia Cardinale), he hopes he'll settle down into family life properly.

The patriarchy of the time and place probably can't be expressed any better than in the service at the couple's wedding, where the priest says "The wife will obey her husband the same as The Lord, because man is woman's master, as Christ is the Church's master." Yikes.

Mastroianni and Cardinale are a gorgeous couple and naturally we expect him to be ravaging her day and night when they get out to their country estate. Bolognini cuts to a beautiful scene with her on a swing when he begins kissing her, but she stops him, saying "It is enough. How many kisses do you want to give me? You are always kissing me. I think you have given me a million kisses in these three months," at first leading us to believe that's what's happening.

She runs off and is soon telling the maid, "We have decided not to have babies," to which the reply is "Really? That's a sin. You can't do it, it's a sin. God wants the husband and his wife to have children." What seems like a possible exploration into the "sinful" use of birth control leads to the shocking truth (by today's standards) that the wife doesn't even understand how babies are made, until her maid rather coarsely tells her that it's done "like animals do it," which repulses her. The next shocking truth (by the standards of the period) is that she doesn't know because her husband hasn't consummated the marriage with her. He's impotent. And eventually we find out he's been that way for a long time.

It's a fascinating turn of events, obviously counter to character types for Mastroianni, and a subject not often dealt with, but here it's not just a study in personal vulnerability, but commentary on a society that's far too obsessed with virility, confusing it with strength.

To the man's shame, word quickly spreads to his father, who can't imagine it to be true. "Impossible," he erupts, "I slept with nine women in one night!" This leads to some fantastic scenes of confrontation not between Mastroianni and Cardinale, but between his father (Pierre Brasseur) and a priest, and his mother (Rina Morelli) with Cardinale. Without the marriage being consummated, you see, it's not a "real marriage" and can be annulled per the Catholic Church, which is bitterly ironic because the husband absolutely adores and loves his wife.

With the family shamed and perhaps to restore his own sense of familial masculinity, the father shows up at a prostitute's place, wanting people to know that "at age 60, I have women," and bragging to her that "Many cuckold men have brought up Alfio Magnano's (my) children." As he begins undressing her he says that if he has a heart attack in the act, "everybody will say Alfio Magnano died fulfilling his duty." His duty!

There is so much importance placed on virility that it overshadows true love, and it also overshadows morality, both with the father's screwing around and then, surprise! The son getting the maid pregnant. What should actually be sources of shame are both trumpeted because they signal "strength," which is quite an inversion, and therein lies the power of the film.

This is a difficult story to understand with its immense dramatizations of a very small and simple matter, causing havc for something very human and trivial. It is Sicilian, and in Sicily any absurdity is possible and taken for real, often turning reality itself into a mess of absurdities, but here, as a non-Sicilian, you must wonder: what's all the fuss about? Why make such a tremendous fuss about nothing? There are any number of marriages where the married couple have decided not to have children and not to have sex, and in Italy, if you don't care about any sexual life at all, it is very simple for you to become a priest or a monk - they live naturally without sex and are obliged to do so. Jesus himself said explicitly, that some people are made not to have sex. But here the fact that a single son married to the richest girl in town doesn't get it going causes a scandal of preporsterous dimensions. If a married couple don't have sex, that's their business and no one else's, isn't it? Why should everyone meddle with it, as if they were royalties, which they definitely aren't?

On the other hand, there are some very subtle ambiguities here. Antonio's cousin Eduardo is very normal and understanding and is the one Antonio can fully confide in, and Eduardo understands Antonio's problems. In the family there is a young delicate maid, and she eventually gets into an awkward situation. The suspicion cannot be whisked away that somehow Eduardo got in between and (accidentally, of course) managed to save Antonio's face. When everyone is cheering and celebrating in the end, Antonio is the only one who appears thoroughly unhappy and downright gloomy, more melancholy than ever. There must be some reason for it.

So it's actually a story of subtleties and very strange and intriguing as such. The obvious doesn't always have to be true, while the whole truth never is completely evident.