In Divorce Italian Style (1961), Marcello Mastroianni played Ferdinando Cefalù, a Sicilian nobleman who, trapped in a loveless marriage in a country where divorce was illegal, plots to have his wife leave him so that he can marry his young cousin. Directed by Pietro Germi, the black comedy won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and Mastroianni’s performance is its sly, weary centre.
Ferdinando is not a villain so much as a man defeated by convention, and Mastroianni plays him with a comic melancholy that makes his scheming almost sympathetic. The film’s success abroad helped to establish Italian comedy on the world stage, and it remains one of Mastroianni’s most admired roles, a portrait of desire, honour and absurdity in a Sicily that no longer quite believes in its own rules.