The Pizza Triangle

A brilliant film; all three leads are just magnifico and Monica Vitti never looked better. Vitti, Mastroianni and Giannini in one film! Sharp treatment of un amour fou. Had never heard of the film before I recently saw it at a festival of restored films at MoMA in New York--what a terrific surprise, a genuine treat, funny and dark film about obsession. I doubt it could ever have been made in the US unfortunately; can't think of any American directors who could handle this successfully. Mastroianni shows his great range. If you love Italian film, see it soon! Now I'm going to see any other Ettore Scola films I can find or haven't seen yet.

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.

The fact that Paul Frees seems to do all the men's voices except for Marcello Mastroianni's and Giancarlo Giannini's seems to add a certain sameness to all the other men in the dubbed version of this film. Mastroianni is a communist bricklayer in love with Monica Vitti and she with him. He's best friends with Giannini, a Communist pizza maker, who's in love with Monica Vitti and she with him. It's like a dirty joke about them commies, they share everything. Except being human, they can't. It drives everyone crazy and the movie is very funny.

There seems to be enormous amounts of real subtextual commentary lost in translation. Mastroianni has his middle left finger in a sling throughout the movie, and is occasionally found on trash heaps. Given that his character's name is "Oreste" I think there's a reference to the classical legend, but it's not the Homeric, Pindaric, Sophoclean versions, but the bogus Robert Graves Year-King, fighting over Monica Vitti. Mastroianni does have flies buzzing around him a lot, indicating he's the Old King.

Given three screenwriters, including Age and Scarpelli, and Ettore Scola directing (he had given Vitti her first screen role almost two decades earlier), there is obviously a lot in this movie that is both precisely of its time and of its place, ill suited to the sort of random translation that an Italian sex comedy got in the 1970s. Unless someone is willing to go back and do a more careful translation, there's little more than a funny and bizarre comedy here. However it certainly is that.

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.

Adelaide (Monica Vitti) kisses unconscious bricklayer Oreste (Marcello Mastroianni) on a pile of rubble. He's angry at the garbage piles in the city. She's obsessed with him. Pizza maker Nello (Giancarlo Giannini) is obsessed with her. It's a love triangle.

I really like the surrealism early in the movie. It's a little weird that it turns into threesome and then it gets serious with the jealousy. This did win a few European awards. It's a pizza with widely different toppings. It's never safe. It's a farce. I'm not laughing that much, but it is fascinating. Her suicide attempt is kind of funny. I was never sure of how this was going to end.