Did you happen to record Monty Python’s Flying Circus when it was shown on PBS back in the 1970s? Do you still have the tapes? Is there a TIME LIFE logo at the end? If so, please write to me. Thank you!

THE WORKS OF TINTO BRASS

Appeasing Producers—Continued

La donna è una cosa meravigliosa

(Woman Is a Wonderful Thing, 1964)

Click here for a review, but I don’t know how to read it.

Okay, I admit it. I’m a total sucker for these delightful light sophisticated comedies of the early and mid-1960s. And yet, except for a few little oddities like Dr. Strangelove and The Pink Panther and How to Steal a Million, they all seem to be forgotten. Check people’s opinions on the web, and you’ll find that the few who deign to comment don’t have anything good to say. Something tells me that this isn’t the entire story. If these films were to be shown again today, I think they would bring the house down. The film’s opening act, La balena bianca (The White Whale), is a true masterwork. The members of the Orfei Circus play themselves—sort of. Midget MC Eros is having a fling with a midget acrobat named Luciana. The trouble is that Eros is married to the fat-woman acrobat Ciccia. Eros’s numerous attempts to murder his wife are all in vain, as she is indestructible. Not only is the story brilliant and captivating, and not only are the circus acts top-notch, but the design, lighting, and cinematography are unbeatable. Visually this is one of the most hauntingly gorgeous movies ever made. The cinematographer was the great Gianni Di Venanzo, and his camera operator, Pasquale (or Pasqualino) De Santis, later rose in the ranks to become arguably the finest cinematographer of all.

The second story, Una donna dolce dolce (A Sweet Sweet Woman), can’t match up to the first, but it’s still a delight. Childlike wife Rossella, unhappy that her husband Carlo doesn’t want children, treats him as an infant, relegating him to the children’s den and treating him to countless gifts of baby toys. Tinto Brass, with what was then his trademark frizzy hair, plays one of the guests in Rossella and Carlo’s back yard who witness Carlo’s squirming embarrassment at his wife’s antics. He has a grand total of two lines.

Maddeningly, the two cartoons (which were in color in this otherwise black-and-white movie) that originally appeared between the two main stories have been deleted from the home video. Why? Probably just to annoy us.

With La mia signora, Il disco volante, La donna è una cosa meravigliosa, and Chi lavora è perduto all released in the last few months of 1964, Brass almost became a well-known name. The fame would die away quickly — only to rally some years later for very different reasons.

THE MUSIC:

A mere 43 years after the première, the soundtrack album is released. It includes the music for “Una donna dolce dolce,” not for “La balena bianca.” Oh well.... Still great to have, though.

CATALOGUE LISTING: ANICA — Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Multimediali.

Originally released on Thursday, 31 December 1964