|
The vixen among wolves in the fishing village, where a pigeon would have to be a jackass not to fly away. A crane shot down the apartment house gives the vertical structure, judge (Teddy Bilis) and police chief (Vittorio Caprioli) piled atop jailbirds while the siren call of "the town disgrace" (Gina Lollobrigida) fills the air. Lolling by the feet of the kingly padrone (Pierre Brasseur), dodging the advances of the flashy ruffian (Yves Montand) and contemplating marriage to the earnest swamp-drainer (Marcello Mastroianni), she keeps busy. The title refers to a drinking game that translates the power plays of swindlers and cuckolds into ritualistic tavern humiliations. "There are those who are in charge, and those who submit." Far from the Madding Crowd, not as pin-up poster (Vadim's And God Created Woman) but as oily opera, a hallmark of Jules Dassin's émigré period. ("Trop de bruit," Brasseur's proto-Don Corleone murmurs repeatedly and sensibly.) The heroine is haloed by a plate of peppers while lashed by her family, creates a crown out of the cash she's purloined from a tourist, wields Montand's own switchblade to complete the cross-shaped scar on his cheek. Parallel to the Hardy theme is a whiff of Tolstoy courtesy of the judge's doleful missus (Melina Mercouri), who yearns to flee with the poetic youth (Raf Mattioli) and instead takes a swan dive in a set piece capped with a nod to Ophüls' Le Plaisir. "No more bosses" is the happy ending for the Proletarian Theater veteran lost in a fairyland of singing street urchins and loafing Greek choruses. "Not one good shot in two hours of film," wrote Godard in a Cahiers du Cinéma article to complement Truffaut's pan of He Who Must Die. With Paolo Stoppa, Lidia Alfonsi, Nino Vingelli, Gianrico Tedeschi, Bruno Carotenuto, Luisa Rivelli, Anna Maria Bottini, and Joe Dassin. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |