Of Life and Love (1954) User Reviews (3)

Uneven Pirandello adaptation

[petra_ste · 6/10 · 26 June 2007]

Based on four tragicomic short tales by great Italian writer Luigi Pirandello, Questa è la Vita (This is Life) is structured into four unrelated episodes.

In La Giara, an artisan paid to fix a jar ends up trapped inside it; the owner refuses to set him free. The episode is faithful to the source material, although performers don't do anything memorable with the characters. And without Pirandello's mordant prose, it isn't quite as effective.

Il Ventaglino is a blink-and-miss, forgettable bit that did not translate effectively to screen.

La Patente was the most promising of the bunch, as it features the great Totò as Chiarchiaro, a man who pretends to be a "iettatore" (someone who brings bad luck) to earn money for his family. Totò is charismatic as usual, but the episode commits an awful mistake: here, Chiarchiaro is really able to cast the "evil eye", which ruins the WHOLE POINT of the story and turns a poignant character study into grotesque, moronic slapstick. And shame to the censorship, which imposed a ridiculous conciliatory voice-over to make the ending less abrasive - a voice-over STILL PRESENT when the movie is transmitted nowadays, to boot.

Thankfully, Marsina Stretta is a notch above the rest: always brilliant Aldo Fabrizi - with his disgruntled face and hilarious body language - is a wedding guest who, tormented by his tight jacket, forgets his usual meek disposition and finds the determination to save the soon-to-be marriage.

6/10

Pirandello stories.

[ItalianGerry · 3 August 2001]

This four-episode film, each part by a different Italian director, is based on stories in Luigi Pirandello's "Novelle per un anno" much as the 1985 Taviani Brothers' film KAOS would be. The first episode, "La giara" (The Jar) is the only story that appears in both films. It is about a wealthy Sicilian landowner's large terra-cotta olive vat that is broken and must be repaired by a jar-repairer who becomes trapped inside it. "Il ventaglio" (The Fan) is about a young mother who begs money in order to be able to buy herself a fan. The third episode is "La patente" (The License, or as it was called in the U.S.A. "The Jinx"). It is an amusing little anecdote about a man who wants to get certified as a jinx so that he can make money from his special abilities of warding off the evil eye.The character is played by the marvelous Italian comic Toto'. The last episode is is "Marsina stretta" (Tight Vest) with a corpulent Aldo Fabrizi needing a tuxedo to wear to a wedding and unable to fully fit into a borrowed one. The episodes were directed respectively by Giorgio Pastina, Mario Soldati, Luigi Zampa, and Aldo Fabrizi.

A Fine Anthology Movie

[boblipton · 8/10 · 26 August 2021]

It's an anthology film, based on four stories by Luigi Pirandello. In the first, an obnoxious landowner fights with a man who seals himself in a jar he is repairing; the second has Myriam Bru as the penniless single mother of a baby; the third, directed and written by Zampi, features Totò as a man trying to make a living as a professional jinx; the fourth stars Aldo Fabrizi as a teacher in a too tight suit whose student, Lucia Bosès marriage seems to be doomed when her mother drops dead on seeing her in her wedding gown.

Anthology movies often suffer because of repetition of themes. Here, all four shorts stand out, in part because each is directed and written by a different team. All except the second have a lot of earthy humor. Totò, as always, is a delight, and with a role that is more than mugging shows himself to be a fine actor, too. It is Fabrizi who gives the standout performance, a bear of a man, simultaneously ridiculous, compassionate, wise and commanding.