Il merlo maschio
| Il Merlo Maschio | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Pasquale Festa Campanile |
| Written by | Luciano Bianciardi (from the short story Il complesso di Loth) |
| Starring | Laura Antonelli |
| Music by | Riz Ortolani |
| Cinematography | Silvano Ippoliti |
| Edited by |
Mario Morra Sergio Montanari |
Release dates | 1971 |
Running time | 112 min. |
| Language | Italian |
Il merlo maschio (The Male Blackbird), known in United Kingdom as The Naked Cello or Secret Fantasy in USA, is an Italian motion picture, filmed in 1971 by director Pasquale Festa Campanile.
Story
The husband Niccolò Vivaldi, is a frustrated cello player (Lando Buzzanca), whose career has stalled, and who is unappreciated by his orchestra director. He begins to take photographs of his beloved wife in poses that gradually became pornographic. Soon after this he begins to show the images to his friend and colleague Cavalmoretti (Lino Toffolo) and in a moment of madness to all the other members of the orchestra. Eventually, he exposes his wife, naked (by an apparent accident with her dress) in front of everyone at Verona's Arena, during the showing of Aida.
This was an attempt by him to show his frustration, and he was immediately envied, when he managed to show off his beautiful wife. (Nobody could steal his wife, because in Italy there wasn't divorce). And the young, beautiful and simple wife (Laura Antonelli, a perplexed but pleasant woman from the countryside) allows herself to be carried inside a cello's case, in order to be shown over a bridge in Verona (an idea that seems a marvellous reworking of the renowned photograph by the dadaist artist Man Ray).
Cast
- Laura Antonelli: Costanza Vivaldi
- Lando Buzzanca: Niccolò Vivaldi
- Gianrico Tedeschi: Orchestra conductor
- Lino Toffolo: Cavalmoretti
- Luciano Bianciardi: Mazzacurati
- Gino Cavalieri: Costanza's father
- Elsa Vazzoler: Costanza's mother
- Ferruccio De Ceresa: Psychoanalyst
- Aldo Puglisi: Pharmacist
- Pietro Tordi: Doctor
Comment
This motion picture was filmed in Verona, and it shows many situations in the environment of practicing symphonic orchestras that at certain moment of the year are allowed to play in Arena. Il Merlo Maschio represents the Commedia all'italiana.
Unlike most Italian comedy films in that epoch, always repeating the storyboards of the first erotic dreams of the symbolic teenager Pierino, or the arousal reactions of secluded soldiers that watch for the first time the shapes of a beauty queen (Gloria Guida, ecc.). The Male Blackbird is also a light and discrete sociologic presentation of the theme of candaulism, something very frequent today (husbands that buy transparent panties and bras for their wives) but that was very rare at those times: the apparently casual, but carefully planned exposing of the spouse by his husband (Candaulism is classified by psychiatrist as a mania or paraphilia).