Divorce Italian Style Blu-Ray

In this black-comic masterpiece, director Pietro Germi delivers a diabolically subversive satire of the Italian family structure, Catholic piety, and male chauvinism. Sending up his own suave image, Marcello Mastroianni stars as the middle-aged scion of a faded aristocratic Sicilian family who pines after his younger cousin (Stefania Sandrelli). The problem: he’s married, in a country where divorce is illegal. Cue the murderous fantasies that drive him down an increasingly deranged path of self-delusion and self-destruction. Laying bare the absurd contradictions of bourgeois morality with each audacious twist, Germi serves up an acerbic portrait of a tradition-bound culture colliding with the unstoppable force of modernity.

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• The Man with a Cigar in His Mouth, a documentary by critic Mario Sesti featuring interviews with longtime friends and collaborators of director Pietro Germi’s
• Interviews with Sesti and actors Lando Buzzanca and Stefania Sandrelli
• Interview with screenwriter Ennio De Concini
• Screen tests with Sandrelli and actor Daniela Rocca
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Stuart Klawans