Three years before SEDUCED AND ABANDONED, Pietro Germi made the wonderful DIVORCE, Italian STYLE. It was a truly amazing film that poked fun at the machismo of Italian men and posed the silly question "Maybe it's better for a man to kill his wife instead of divorcing her"! Despite the film's popularity, Germi's next film didn't come out until SEDUCED AND ABANDONED in 1964. While it's a very good film, it doesn't seem nearly as original as the last one and could easily have been entitled "Divorce, Italian Style Part 2". That's because the plot once again is about machismo and the notion that a "real man" is most concerned about keeping up appearances--just like in the previous film. Because of that, the film seemed much less fresh and more a continuation of the last movie.SEDUCED AND ABANDONED begins with the troll, Peppino, seducing his fiancée's very young sister, Agnese (aged 15). To make things worse, the girl becomes pregnant. The family is naturally furious and most of what the crazed father is concerned about is what the people in their town will think. So, he decides to concoct a rather elaborate plot to force Peppino into marrying Agnese. The trouble is, Peppino now says he won't marry ANY girl who isn't a virgin--even though HE was the one responsible for this! There's a lot more to the film than this and it is a satire on Italian morality. Very funny and the father (Saro Urzì) did a great job as the befuddled and angry man, but as I said above, it all seems so familiar.Overall, a good film and one I would have enjoyed more had I not seen DIVORCE, Italian STYLE. However, the two films have such a similar spirit and cover so much of the same material, I can only mildly recommend SEDUCED AND ABANDONED.

A beautiful sixteen year old girl is seduced by her older sister's fiancée, a conniving would-be bureaucrat. How far will the tradition-bound paterfamilias go to restore the family's lost honor? Well, if you're writer/director Pietro Germi, the answer is pretty darn far—including perjury, kidnapping, murder, and bribing an eccentric baron with a new set of false teeth. Rarely has male hypocrisy and sexual double standards been so thoroughly lampooned. The film walks a fine line between comedy and tragedy, as the more and more traumatized sixteen year old girl is passed back and forth like damaged goods. Shot in beautiful black and white, on location. If you liked MAFIOSO, last year's great Italian rediscovery, you'll like this.

Criterion Collection was generous enough to introduce me to Germi's works, first starting with Divorce, Italian Style. It was only natural that I followed up with Seduced and Abandoned, since I was blown away by Divorced, and had a newfound love of contemporary European cinema, especially from French and Italian filmmakers. I know it's relatively simple to find out about little gems of work from foreign directors (using IMDb, for example), but I'm grateful for a company like Criterion to steer me in the direction of fantastic films and the visionaries that create them. Saves me a lot of time and effort, haha.Now, I'm just some random nobody in his early 20's, born and raised on the prairie of Western Canada. In a sense, I may not be as "culturally perceptive" as someone hailing from a direct Old-World European background. But to discover a film such as Seduced and Abandoned, it was a guaranteed shock to see the enormity of differences between the values, traditions, and customs of Sicily compared to what I grew up in, astonishing since these worlds are separated only by a couple generations! Then again, forced marriage might be as frowned upon nowadays as if someone from that era might look into the future and see the overwhelming divorce rate of ours! It's really a subjectivity of time, where a brilliant, neorealist director, not unlike Germi, of our time will be able to capture a kind of absurdity in the way we deal with (or possibly lack thereof) now common principles and practices, such as infidelity, polygamy, same-sex unions, etc.I'm rambling. Seduced was a depressingly good movie. Sardonic and whimsical at the same time, this one had the ability to leave a bittersweet taste with me afterward, to not dismiss the ideals held in Sicilian culture a couple generations ago, but to ponder them, to compare them to the beliefs and mores of our generation.Sandrelli was phenomenal, as always. And I'm glad Germi cast Saro Urzi as the father instead of some North American counterpart, like Borgnine... Added to a certain authenticity that I wouldn't find if that'd been the case.Lando Buzzanca as Antonio, and Leopoldo Triste as the Baron were amazing as the kind of actors that kept the comedic ball rolling in this type of film; although Seduced is known as a key player in the Comedia d'all Italiano, without these laugh-out-loud performances, the film would be a depressing portrayal of old Italian values and nothing but.I look forward to the day when a company like Criterion will release more of Pietro Germi's film works (undoubtedly his 1950's dramatic working class oeuvre), to an international audience...Until then.

Granted, it's not as polished or swanky as "Divorce". No dashing Marcello, no Sophia's curves. Perhaps it dabs in paint too close to that of his more famous predecessor. Yet, what delightful film! The comedy of manners and mores can rarely get any better. And then the cutting, darker, a bit menacing undertones that reveal that fascinating Sicilia of times now lost forever: wow! I love both of Germi's gems but if I could take only one with me it would be "Sedotta e abbandonata". I also marvel at how well Germi, himself un Genovese, understood the very heart and soul of that lovely island off the boot of Italy. Almost perfect: who cares for perfection anyway?