Director · Screenwriter · 1914–1974

Pietro Germi

2: briefs
13:00: average
26 min: in total

On film.briefs2

Divorce, Italian Style

Pietro Germi, Renzo Marignano · 1961

Divorce, Italian Style (1961) is a Sicilian black comedy in which an impoverished nobleman plots to murder his wife in order to claim leniency under Italy’s honour-killing statutes. Directed by Pietro Germi and written by Germi, Ennio de Concini, Alfredo Giannetti and Agenore Incrocci, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as Ferdinando Cefalù, whose elaborate scheme exposes the contradictions between law, religion and social expectation in pre-divorce Italy. The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and remains a benchmark of satirical precision.

13:00

Seduced and Abandoned

Pietro Germi · 1964

Pietro Germi’s 1964 film Seduced and Abandoned uses dark procedural satire to examine Sicilian customs around forced marriage, statutory rape and legal 'honour repair'. Set in Sciacca, it follows fifteen-year-old Agnese Ascalone as her family, the Califanos and the courts negotiate her future through staged kidnappings, legal loopholes and public shaming. With Stefania Sandrelli and Saro Urzì, and written by Germi, Incrocci, Scarpelli and Vincenzoni, it is formally rigorous, morally unsentimental and structurally relentless.