MONSIGNOR CUPID is the fourth instalment of Italian compendium film LE BAMBOLE and it’s sure taken me a while to get around to it. The film has taken the time-honoured approach of putting the best films at the front and the back. Sometimes this choice is dictated by the framing structure or studio politics (who’s hot) but all things being equal it’s best to get the audience enthusiastic fast and then give them a strong finish.
The cast is great, with Gina Lollobrigida in saucy older woman mode, Akim Tamiroff as a comedy priest, and walking Ken Doll Jean Sorel as good as I’ve ever seen him. All orchestrated by Mauro Bolognini, who has taken the best approach to the anthology film. Some treat is as a quick and easy paycheque (Antonioni, I’m looking at you), others as a chance to experiment. Bolognini has got a satisfying little story which he can lavish attention on — from the sheer quantity of expressive angles he uses he obviously wasn’t short of time.
Tamiroff and his nephew Sorel are billeted in Lollo’s husband’s hotel and she’s desperate to sleep with the young man. He’s uneducated in the ways of the flesh and she can’t seem to get the idea into his head — even putting him in the room next to hers and stripteasing in front of the keyhole (in an extraordinary nightie attached by UHU glue) doesn’t make the concept, or anything else, penetrate.
So she starts shamelessly manipulating old Tamiroff, accusing the hapless lad of indecencies which will then be reported to him with much face-slapping. The accusations are really how-to instructions for adultery.
“In Italy we don’t look at the lips, we look at the eyes,” Fellini told Mike Hodges, who was supervising the dub of AND THE SHIP SAILS ON. “You’re full of shit, Federico,” said Mike. But it seems to be true, hence all that revoicing of foreign stars (of the three leads, only Gina parles Italiano, though Sorel made so many movies in Italy he may have picked up more than a smattering). I have to say, I have never seen such exuberant lip-flap as is displayed by Tamiroff. A multilinguist, he apparently wasn’t speaking the local language and whatever tongue he used lines up very poorly in terms of phonemes. Bolognini resorts to that great MT NAME IS JULIA ROSS over-the-shoulder composition where literally only the eyes are visible, the mouth usefully blocked by the shoulder impingement.
Lots of other good angles which enhance the comedy and faux-emotion (the movie is both hotblooded about lust and coldblooded about society’s claims on our behaviour). When Sorel is about to explode with desire a mirrored surface allows him to go full SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN.
Composer Armando Trovajoli has been a great asset to all these short, and he creates a hurdygurdyish romp of a score for this one. I’ve paid too little attention to him, despite his scoring nearly as many Italian movies as Morricone. He’s nothing if not ebullient — it was screening IL MAGNIFICO CORNUTO in honour of Claudia Cardinale this weekend that made me sit up and notice him, and here he is again.
The dizzy spiralling of his score comes into its own in the final shot which reminds me a little of Mario Bava’s hilarious meta ending to BLACK SABBATH — a revolving door spins endlessly by itself as the cast exit frame, and we become aware of the whole camera crew, tightly clustered so as to reflect clearly in the panels as they rotate. FINE.
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