LA RAGAZZA CON LA PISTOLA directed by Mario Monicelli (Italy, 1968)
“All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun”, said Jean-Luc Godard and Mario Monicelli set out to prove him right in this enjoyable comedy caper from the late 1960s.
This particular girl with a gun is Assunta Patanè, a beautiful young Sicilian woman who, having been seduced and abandoned by an oily Latin-lover sets out to murder him to restore her honour.
She is supported in this mission by the women in her community who are all dressed in black as if in mourning for the loss of her maidenhood.
They give her a gun, passport and a one-way ticket to pursue the philanderer who has fled to Britain.
Carlo Giuffrè is perfectly cast as the caddish Vincenzo Macaluso whose ‘wham bam thank you m’am’ seduction technique brings out the killer instinct in Assunta.
On first arriving in Scotland, the language problem is pronounced as is the cultural shock of seeing men in skirts for the first time.
Assunta knows only a few words of English but ,miraculously, even those who say they can’t speak Italian somehow transform into fluent speakers and soon everyone in England has mastered her mother tongue. Continue reading
