Catherine Spaak's status as a kind of "It" girl of the Sixties has rather mystified me. In the few movies in which I'd seen her (La Noia, The Libertine, Hotel, Il Sorpasso), she struck me as a rather conventional sexpot, not particularly beautiful, and usually playing a blank and sullen girl who played, unemotionally, with men's feelings. In "La Parmigiana", she plays a similar type of woman, but with a wide range of expressions and feelings that constitute, for me, a delightful surprise and her best screen performance.
Dora, a stylish young woman, arrives unexpectedly in Parma to stay with an "aunt" (actually, a friend of her late mother). Director Pietrangeli then skillfully unfolds the story of how she reached this point in her life. Gliding the camera to the right, to focus on a dark area of space, then continuing the movement into a flashback, is the continual brilliant structure of the film. Though the aunt thinks of Dora as an innocent girl, the viewer learns that she has progressed through life by relying on her charms with a succession of men. The scenario brings to mind Pietrangeli's recently revived - and darkly pessimistic - "Io La Conoscevo Bene", in which Stefania Sandrelli plays a dim-witted country girl striving for a career in the movies. In "La Parmigiana", Spaak's character Dora lives by her wits, and leaves us confident of her resilience.
Excellent supporting performances by Didi Perego as the loquacious Aunt Amneris, Salvo Randone as her seemingly hen-pecked musician husband, roused from torpor by the presence of Dora, Lando Buzzanca as a hapless suitor, and Nino Manfredi as an ambitious would-be ad man, frustrated at his inability to catch the wave of "il Boom", round out a thoroughly engaging satiric comedy. It's a shame that this is not as well known as those other superb entertainments from Italy in the Sixties.
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