Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1962

The Contenders:

Frank Perry: David and Lisa
Pietro Germi: Divorce, Italian Style
David Lean: Lawrence of Arabia (winner)
Arthur Penn: The Miracle Worker
Robert Mulligan: To Kill a Mockingbird

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1962

The Contenders:

Divorce, Italian Style (winner)
Freud
Last Year at Marienbad
That Touch of Mink
Through a Glass Darkly

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1962

The Contenders:

Burt Lancaster: Birdman of Alcatraz
Jack Lemmon: Days of Wine and Roses
Marcello Mastroianni: Divorce, Italian Style
Peter O’Toole: Lawrence of Arabia
Gregory Peck: To Kill a Mockingbird (winner)

Beginnings and Endings

Film: Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio all’Italiana); Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all’Italiana)
Format: DVD from NetFlix (Marriage) and streaming video from Kanopy (Divorce), both on laptop.

The school I work for has recently signed up for a new movie database called Kanopy. I did a quick check of what it has, and there are a few I’d really like to see lurking in tis corners. When Marriage Italian Style showed up from NetFlix, I knew it was time to take Kanopy on a test run as the back half of a double feature. As it happens, of these two movies, Marriage Italian Style was released second. However, it only makes sense to have the marriage before the divorce.

The premise for Marriage Italian Style is entertaining. A wealthy businessman named Domenico Soriano (Marcello Mastroianni) is summoned to the home of his mistress. She has collapsed and is near death. We get a long flashback from him to tell us the story of him and his mistress. The two met during a bombing raid in World War II. Domenico finds a young girl in a brothel who refuses to leave because the public will see her and know where she works. This is Filumena Marturano (Sophia Loren), and it’s the start of a long relationship.