The Birds, the Bees and the Italians [1966]

 The ingeniously named The Birds, the Bees and the Italians (the direct translation of its Italian title, interestingly, was simply “Ladies and Gentlemen”) – the concluding chapter in Pietro Germi’s “commedia all'italiana” classic ‘Honour Trilogy’ – distinctively stood out vis-à-vis both its precursors, viz. Divorce Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned.  For one, this was an episodic film with hyperlinked stories wherein the POV shifted between the same group of men; for another, it was set in the north-eastern region of Veneto, as opposed to the southern Sicilian towns in the preceding films. Germi’s preoccupations with moral codes seeped in provincial expressions of marriage, family, machismo, sexuality and infidelity, using satiric and farcical brushstrokes, were nevertheless there throughout. In the hilarious first story, a garrulous doctor (Gigi Ballista) can’t control his mirth and tongue upon being confided by a womanizer friend of his impotency; this lowering of guard was exactly what his buddy needed to seduce the doctor’s ravishing wife (Beba Lončar). In the middle segment, a morose bank employee (Gastone Moschin), who’s living through hellish marital life on account of his nagging wife, falls for a beautiful cashier (Virna Lisi) at the café frequented by him and his gregarious friends; the trouble starts when, instead of having an affair on the side, which would’ve been more socially acceptable, he decides to elope with his girlfriend. In the final episode, the lecherous men seduce a young girl from the country; upon realizing the legal implications as she’s still a minor, they must jointly suppress the matter. An alcohol-fuelled private party in the first tale, with the camera dizzyingly roving across multiple characters, was this ironic and irreverent film’s most bravura sequence.

Director: Pietro Germi

Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Social Satire/Omnibus Film/Ensemble Film

Language: Italian

Country: Italy