Word: mastroiannis
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...including Millionaire Naples (1945), Filumena Marturano (1946) and Inner Voices (1948), celebrated the earthy Neapolitan zest for life; of kidney failure; in Rome. Two of his screenplays, a segment of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), and Marriage-Italian Style (1964), adapted from Filumena, both starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni and directed by Vittorio De Sica, were among Italy's funniest film comedies of the 1960s...
...avoid being considered a lady-killer. In truth, the Italian actor has lately been playing against type, most notably as an aged and mellowed Casanova in La Nuit de Varennes. And in The General of the Dead Army, a burlesque, Grand Guignol black comedy, which opened recently in Paris, Mastroianni plays the flamboyant General Ariosto, who does not so much get the woman as argue with her over possession of the remains of her late husband. "In most of my roles," he protests, "I am more often the victim than the conqueror...
Most of the film's talk and entertainment takes place in a carriage which plunges through the countryside on its escape from Paris, Filling this carriage are a scandalous/novelist/social historian/pornographer named Restif de la Bretonne (Jean-Louis Barrault); an aging but still engaging Casanova (Marcello Mastroianni); the dry English essayist Thomas Paine (Harvey Keitel); a sumptious Comtesse Sophie de la Borde, lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette (Hanna Schygulla); and various peripheral caricatures of the aristocracy. The wit, the life-blood of an era contained in one carriage, offer the potential for a rich entertainment, but the result...
...intended as a counterbalance--a light-hearted portrayal of chaos--proves nothing of the kind, with the La-Cage-aux-Folles-type fairy-coachmen who are tedious rather than funny. The fresh moments are all to far in between in this frankly boring and undistinguished film; only ardent Mastroianni enthusiasts or connoisseurs of 1790s French fashion will come away from La Nuit de Varennes satisfied...
...senses there is a whopper in the making up the road. Scola's imagery has a maturity that matches the script's subtlety of detail and simplicity of overall vision. The actors play characters first, ideas second, and they are superb, none more so than Mastroianni, who contemplates age as wryly as once he eyed the opposite sex. La Nuit de Varennes lasts more than three hours, but it passes in a moment. It is only in memory that it lingers - very likely forever. -By Richard Schickel