Married Lovers

...Despite their superficial similarities, in fact, the two movies could not be more different Wifemistress is softcore porn, and its achievement is as limited as its ambition-to expose human bodies Flawed as it is, The Innocent is nonetheless a serious attempt to explore human passions Between them lies the chasm that separates art from non-art...

...Unfortunately, in addition to such masterfully conceived and executed scenes, The Innocent is studded with Visconti's typically and meaninglessly florid visuals In particular, the crazed interior decorator who was the director s alter ego seems to have been given free rein At one point, Tulio and Teresa make love on red velvet pillows in front of a blazing fire and an ornate mantelpiece with heavy brass fittings For a second, I thought I was watching the notorious seduction scene in The Other Side of Midnight...

...All this happens within a few seconds, but Visconti's painterly conception and economic direction of Antonelli's movements suggest a complicated web of meanings Both comfortable in and yet partly shaded from the bright world of possibilities that has opened up for her at Tulio's insistence, at once free of her husband and yet dependent upon him even for her very freedom, Giuhana understandably hesitates before submitting to his advances Moreover, we subsequently learn of the complication that retrospectively enriches the short sequence even more She already knows what he does not-that she is pregnant by another man...

...In this movie, however, the plot is little more than a flimsy pretext for showing Antonelli in various stages of undress and a multitude of supposedly erotic albeit grossly undignified situations (masturbation, lesbianism, etc) True, there is considerably less nudity, at least on Antonelli's part, here than in The Innocent, but the effect is decidedly sleazier Whereas the Visconti film is truly erotic, Wifemistress utterly fails at arousing...

...On Screen MARRED LOVERS by robert asahina WHEN HE died in 1976, Lu-chino Visconti left behind a complete but unedited film adaptation of Gabriele D'Annunzio's 1892 novel, LTnnocente The English-language version, The Innocent, was first screened for critics late last year, and I was appalled by what I saw Scene followed scene haphazardly, as if to emphasize Visconti's characteristically excessive visual style The total effect was operatic, in the worst sense-a fitting capstone, or so I thought, to the career of a director whose oeuvre included the ornate Ludwig (1973), the turgid Death in Venice (1971), and the overwrought The Damned(1969...

...One thing, though, did not change the bad acting Giannini was an especially sorry choice to play Tulio While he is a competent comedian, he simply lacks the emotional range for the part, his Tulio is a swine, not a nihilist Worse, Giannini has mastered only two facial expressions He pops his eyes to indicate a variety of reactions and emotions, from surprise to anger, and he lowers his lids and peers out of the corner of his eyes to suggest suspicion or hostility At best, he resembles a cut-rate imitation of Marcello Mastroianni-who, at his peak, would have been ideal for the role...

...One sequence takes place after Tulio and Giuhana enter his family's summer house He tries desperately to win her back "Let's pretend we're two entirely different people who have just met," he says "You've been my wife, my sister, but never my lover " His seduction attempt is partially successful Although she tries to resist him, writhing naked in bed, gripped by both passion and resentment, she finally yields -at least physically But her sexual surrender is possible solely because her husband's permissiveness enabled her formerly repressed sensuality to surface-with another man, whose child she knows she is bearing, even as she satisfies her newly awakened sexual hunger with a man she no longer loves Antonelli manages to convey all these conflicting impulses by the sheer physlcality of her performance, which is as disciplined in the nude as it was five minutes earlier, when she closed her parasol, fully and demurely clothed...

...Luckily, a genuine actress plays Giuhana Laura Antonelli is no stranger to American screens, perhaps her best-known role was the maid in Malizia But she has never been shown to such good advantage To begin with, there is simply more of her on view than ever before She is featured in two fairly lengthy and explicit nude scenes, and the sight of her sprawled across the big screen in Technicolor is practically an incitement to not This is emphatically not "tasteful," the standard justification for cinematic nudity Her appearance produces precisely the erotic jolt that Visconti knew it would...

...Still, I wasn't exactly surprised that The Innocent began attracting rave notices and big crowds when it opened in Manhattan this year Many filmgoers admire precisely what 1 find most offensive in Visconti's later works-his directorial extravagance But I was surprised to learn that the movie enjoying such critical and popular acclaim was different from the one I saw at the screening About 20 minutes of The Innocent originally cut by the Italian producers-who hesitated to market a lengthy, subtitled "art film' in the U S -had now been restored...

...But such moments of hammy estheticism are much less egregious in the longer version The substantive material of those 20 minutes has balanced the previously lopsided emphasis on the visual...

...I was to be amazed, however, at how much was changed by the restoration of those 20 minutes The basic story line, to be sure, remains the same Tulio Hermil (Giancarlo Giannini), an aristocrat in late 19th-centurv Italy, has a wife, Giuhana (Laura Antonelli), whom he loves as a sister, and a mistress, Teresa (Jennifer O'Neill), who makes him feel unhappy but also alive and vital He has renounced the authority of the Church and the bonds of family "I don't let some divinity decide what is right or wrong," lie proclaims "We can only count on ourselves " And he invites Giuhana to a\ail herself of the same freedom he enjoys "I want you to live life to the fullest without fear What's valid for me is valid for you ". But after she becomes pregnant following a brief affair with a writer, Filippo D'Arbono (Marc Porel), Tulio insists that she have an abortion She refuses and eventually gives birth to the child Confronted with the consequences of his own espousal of nihilism, Tulio is driven into despair Fits of anger and jealousy give way to violence He murders the infant and then takes his own life...

...Possessed of this information, 1 went to see it a second time-with admittedly slim expectations After all, horror stories about how producers ravage the textual integrity of movies are nothing new In addition, although the extra-esthetic motivations for such tampering-usually financial in nature-are reprehensible, film is by no means a "pure" art, free of commercial interests and obligations Finally, I have seldom been able to discern much difference between pristine and violated versions of well-publicized movies Stanley Kubrick's 2001, for example, was thoroughly boring in both its long and very long form...

...Antonelli is also starring, with Marcello Mastroianni, in another Italian import, Wifemistress-a film that has some remarkable similarities to The Innocent Mastroianni plays a turn-of-the-century aristocrat who is forced by a contrived set of circumstances to pretend he is dead During the time he is in hiding, his "widow" (Antonelli) discovers that he had a secret life-as a libertine and as a political activist With her husband watching in horror, unable or unwilling to expose himself, she begins to practice what he preached And like Tulio, Mastroianni's nobleman soon regrets ever having opened his mouth...

...That plot skeleton covers pretty much all the shorter version has to offer intellectually The 20 minutes it lacks are full of small details of characterization and subtle indications of motivation-the rich texture necessary to flesh out a story into a full-bodied film For instance, both Giuliana's blossoming affair and Tuho's incipient jealousy are neatly suggested m a brief scene, initially cut by the producers, that occurs before he quite realizes how literally she is following his injunctions He hears her singing as she dresses to go out, realizes that she is wearing a new perfume, and discovers one of D'Arbono's books in her room He then contemptuously tells his wife, "He may be a great writer, but he's ill-bred " Without that short episode, and especially that revealing remark, Tuho's later fits of rage seem arbitrary and forced...

...In one particularly striking scene, for example, alter he has learned of Giuliana's after, Tulio travels with her to his family's summer estate, where he hopes to el led a reconciliation When they leave their carnage and walk toward the house, she pops open her parasol, for a brief, frozen moment, Giuhana-wearing an upswept bonnet with a veil and a jacket that converges from peaked shoulders to a wasp waist and flares over bustled hips-looks like one of Seurat's Sunday afternoon strollers Then, realizing that Tulio is impatient to go inside, she hesitates slightly and closes her parasol...

...Another stupidly staged and photographed sequence involves Tulio's decision to murder his wife's child As he enters the nursery, the matron departs -but not before leaving the mirrored door of the closet open at precisely the right angle for us to see Tulio hesitating next to the baby's crib Visconti could hardly have chosen a less subtle way to indicate Tulio's deranged dissociation...

...It is "detail" of this kind that the producers regarded as expendable, and I'm inclined to believe they were not being entirely base and commercial They probably thought they were doing the "artistic' thing, joining those critics who contend that plot, characterization and motivation can easily be sacrificed in favor of beautiful pictures And in the case of Visconti, one is almost willing to grant the point, since he has always been a master of the purely sensual...

...As Teresa, Jennifer O'Neill is less a cold-hearted courtesan that what she actually is-a fashion model in period costume, and her dubbed Italian voice sounds hilariously artificial I haven't been so amused since I heard Marni Nixon's singing erupt from Audrey Hepburn's skinny little body in My Fair Lady...