Word: sicilianism
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CINEMA Divorce-Italian Style. A murderously funny study of what happens when a marriage breaks up in Italy-it doesn't go pffft!, it goes rat-tat-tat. Marcello Mastroianni is hilarious as the husband, a tintypical Sicilian smoothie...
...honor is traditionally worth more than life-or wife. The villain of the piece is a mousy impoverished nobleman (Marcello Mastroianni), living on heirlooms in the last unrented rooms of the family palace. He spends most of his time wearily dodging his wife, diligently troweling pomatum on his girlish Sicilian ringlets, meticulously adjusting his hair net, nervously encouraging a limp black mustache that seems to be made of dyed spaghetti. At every opportunity he examines his mirror with watery eyes and murmurs to himself contentedly, "No doubt about it, I am an impressive type...
...perfect parody of a small-town smoothie. And Director Germi, who at 44 is one of the least known but one of the most talented (The Straw Man, An Ugly Mess) of the major Italian directors, shows a flair for deadly fun that few of his rivals can rival. Sicilian customs, Latin lovers, political priests, legal shenanigans-his targets are whale-sized and he sinks a keen lampoon...
...Italians comfortably out in front in commerical hydrofoil development is Carlo Rodriquez, 51, a tall, reticent Sicilian engineer whose Spanish ancestors settled in Italy 150 years ago. Since 1958 Rodriquez has turned out 42 hydrofoil ferries at his 500-man Messina shipyard. Today, his aliscafi wing between Venice and Trieste, thread the fjords of Norway, link Caribbean islands, and are about to begin regular service between Montevideo and Buenos Aires. Last year Rodriquez sold $3,100,000 worth of hydrofoils; this year, with $1,800,000 in sales so far, he expects to do substantially better...
...Vinci is not deterred from any enterprise by lack of experience. A prime example is Count Gaetano Marzotto, 67, whose family-owned Marzotto Textile is Italy's biggest wool spinner and producer of readymade clothes. Several years ago, enraged by an all-night bout with bedbugs in a Sicilian hotel, Marzotto set out to build his own hotels in Italy's remote places. Clean, simple and inexpensive, the improbably named "Jolly Hotels" were such a success that the Marzottos now have 51 of them, the biggest privately owned hotel chain in Italy...