Seduced and Abandoned [1964]

 Seduced and Abandoned, the uproarious middle chapter in Pietro Germi’s subversive ‘Honour Trilogy’ – sandwiched between his rollicking masterpiece Divorce Italian Style, and the amusing The Birds, the Bees and the Italians – was a work of manic brilliance. The satire here was so pungent and acidic that a bout of heartburn is unavoidable, even while laughing uncontrollably – and uncomfortably – at its madcap, farcical and outré humour aimed at medieval mindsets and ways of life. The film was intimately linked to the delicious preceding film, which itself was scalding and grotesque, in that this too was centred on the primitive social mores of “custom”, “tradition” and “honour” in a Sicilian town seeped in patriarchy, machismo, gossip-mongering and shallow veneer; just that, it was nastier, crazier and even more baroque, and Germi wildly cut loose in his narrative design. When her family gets to know that the young and nubile Agnese (Stefania Sandrelli) has been seduced by, and in the process lost her precious virginity to, Peppini (Aldo Puglisi), her elder sister’s shifty and lecherous fiancé, all hell breaks loose. Her father Don Vincenzo (Saro Urzì) tries every trick in the book to “save” his family’s honour and image – from deceit, browbeating and emotional blackmailing, to kidnapping, shotgun wedding and attempted murder. The film was made even zanier by noteworthy turns led by a stellar Urzi; string of oddball characters – a suicidal and penurious aristocrat, a cop who wishes Sicily’s erasure from Italy’s map, etc. –; idiosyncratic score with a mix of sardonic dirges and sassy jazz; and gorgeous B/W cinematography that alternated between wide-angled framing and the kind of oblique close-ups of gleefully sweaty and sleazy faces straight out of Buñuel.

Director: Pietro Germi

Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Social Satire

Language: Italian

Country: Italy