{"id":2014,"date":"2010-04-30T14:25:38","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T14:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2014"},"modified":"2010-04-30T14:25:56","modified_gmt":"2010-04-30T14:25:56","slug":"malizia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/malizia\/","title":{"rendered":"Malizia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Malizia\"
Malizia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aka Malicious
\n1972
\nOriginal running time: 99 mins
\nItaly
\nA Clesi production
\nDistributed by Cineriz
\nDirector: Salvatore Samperi
\nStory: Salvatore Samperi
\nScreenplay: Ottavio Jemma, Sandro Parenzo, Salvatore Samperi
\nCinematogrpahy: Vittorio Storaro
\nMusic: Fred Bongusto
\nEditor: Sergio Montanari
\nCast: Laura Antonelli (Angela), Turi Ferro (Ignazio), Alessandro Momo (Nino), Tina Aumont (Luciana), Lilla Brignone (Granma), Pino Caruso (Don Cirillo), Angela Luce (Widow Corallo), Stefano Amato (Porcello), Gianluigi Chirizzi (Nuccio), Grazia Di Marz\u00e0 (Adelina), Massimiliano Filoni (Enzio)<\/p>\n

Salvatore Samperi, who died in March this year, was another of those directors with a name that’s very familiar to me even though I haven’t actually seen any of his films. \u00a0Born in Padua in 1944, he was part of a group of filmmakers to emerge from Venice in the late 1960s, others including Tinto Brass and Aldo Lado.\u00a0 Like Brass, particularly, his films tend to mix up eroticism with a rather skeptical view of Italian manners, and they also manage to be surprisingly elegant given their puckish, saucy storylines.<\/p>\n

Samperi made his debut with Grazie zia <\/strong>(68), which was swiftly followed by Cuore di mamma <\/strong>(69) and Uccidete il vitello grasso e arrostitelo<\/strong> (70). Despite them being moderately popular, he reportedly gained a reputation amongst producers as someone who had problems finishing projects, and it was really with Malizia<\/strong>, which was hugely successful on its initial Italian release (making 2,172,000,000 lire) that he cemented his reputation.\u00a0 Curiously, many of his films from this period are based around a similar narrative, in which an adolescent boy or young man is traumatised in some way and develops an unhealthy sexual obsession with an attractive older woman.\u00a0 It’s a model which Malizia <\/strong>follows almost to the letter.<\/p>\n

\"Alessandro
Alessandro Momo and Laura Antonelli in Malizia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When his wife dies, the much respected and wealthy shopkeeper Ignazio La Brocca (Turi Ferro) is left a widower.\u00a0 What’s more he’s left with three sons to look after: eighteen year old Antonio (Gianluigi Chirizzi), fourteen year old Nino (Alessandro Momo) and nine year old Enzino (Massimiliano Filoni).\u00a0 To help him out, he takes on a new housekeeper, Angela (Laura Antonelli), who proves not only to be more than capable of looking after them all, but also rather hot to boot.<\/p>\n

Before long, Ignazio is stealing glances at her bottom at every opportunity, and both Antonio and Nino are going out of their horny, adolescent minds with lust.\u00a0 Nino even begins telling his dumb-ass friends that he’s actually sleeping with her, while the disrespectful Antonio unsuccessfully tries to seduce her.\u00a0 Things take a turn for the worse, though, when Nino discovers that his father has proposed to her, at which point he starts threatening to turn everyone – and most particularly Enzino – against her unless she does exactly as he tells her.\u00a0 His demands become increasingly sexual and vindictive, until Angela is left with no option but to turn the tables on him.<\/p>\n

This is another in a trend in Italian films from the early seventies to feature a sexy young woman arriving in the household of a supposedly bourgeois family and arousing all sorts of uncivilised passions (see also La nipote<\/strong> etc etc).\u00a0 It’s a kind of erotic melodrama with comic moments, but all done in a very artful, elegant fashion, with few of the more exploitative elements that characterised these kinds of productions.\u00a0 It’s beautifully shot by Vittorio Storaro, although you’d be hard pressed to tell this from the appallingly pan and scanned English language versions currently available, and there’s also a great soundtrack by Fred Bongusto, even if it occasionally breaks out into a kind of cheerily demented noodling that’s quite impressively inappropriate for what’s happening on screen.<\/p>\n

\"Alessandro
Alessandro Momo and Laura Antonelli in Malizia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although the story has a darker aspect – Nino is an ‘orrible little creep who frankly needs a good slap around the chops – it’s a generally upbeat production, and the more sordid and cruel aspects are rather underplayed. To keep the intellectuals happy there are a few comments about class – with the poor Angela being treated as a general dogsbody by the La Brocca’s – and also about Italian social manners of the time (including an amusingly subverted funeral and wedding sequence).\u00a0 But it doesn’t feel particularly substantial, and although it won a couple of awards it’s hard to see quite why, as there were far, far better films made by Italian directors that year.\u00a0 It’s decently put together, undoubtedly, but when it comes down to it it’s all actually a little bit silly.<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t just the critics who approved, and Malizia <\/strong>was a hugely popular film throughout Europe.\u00a0 Perhaps this was something to do with the fact that it was seen as rather a controversial production, showing both a teenage boy both sexually abusing an older woman and a being cajoled, not unwillingly, into having sex.\u00a0 Or maybe it had more to do with the fact that much of the publicity featured Laura Antonelli in a state of undress, which was actually rather misleading because until the climax she remains fully clothed.\u00a0 Whatever the case, this was the film that made her a star, and she deserves it, putting in a warm, persuasive performance that’s a class above that of the usual euro-sexpots who populated these kinds of films.\u00a0 She’d work with Samperi three more times, on Peccato veniale <\/strong>(74), Casta e pura <\/strong>(81) and finally on a little seen sequel, Malizia 2000 <\/strong>(91), which also featured Turi Ferro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malizia is another in a trend in Italian films from the early seventies to feature a sexy young woman arriving in the household of a supposedly bourgeois family and arousing all sorts of uncivilised passions (see also La nipote etc etc). It’s a kind of erotic melodrama with comic moments, but all done in a very artful, elegant fashion, with few of the more exploitative elements that characterised these kinds of productions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[765,767,766],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2014"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2220,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014\/revisions\/2220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}