Magnificent Cuckold, The (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Antonio PietrangeliRelease Date(s)
1964 (September 1, 2026)Studio(s)
Les Films Copernic/Sancro Film/Cineriz (Radiance Films)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A
Review
A celebrated commedia all’italiana, The Magnificent Cuckold (Il magnifico cornuto, 1964) is a fine example of that subgenre of primarily late-’50s through ’70s Italian comedy, often satirizing manners, marriage, and sexual relationships, particularly among the rising middle class, a genre perhaps most famously represented by Pietro Germi’s Divorce, Italian Style.
Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli, The Magnificent Cuckold is overlong at 125 minutes—it has one ending too many and might have covered the same ground without losing anything of substance at 85 minutes—but it boasts an excellent starring performance by Ugo Tognazzi (the actor most famous outside Italy for the later, original La Cage aux folles and its sequels), excellent cinematography and production values, and especially its lively, eccentric jazz musical score, by Armando Trovajoli.
Tognazzi is Andrea Artusi, a wealthy hat tycoon idyllically married to gorgeous Maria Grazia (gorgeous Claudia Cardinale). While all their friends and associates seem to be carrying on with extramarital affairs, Andrea and Maria Grazia are utterly, loyally devoted to one another. Until, that is, at a party he’s seduced by married woman Cristiana (Michèle Giradon).
(An amusing bit of trivia; both Cardinale and Giradon had recently co-starred with John Wayne, the former in Circus World, the latter in Hatari!)
The affair itself proceeds smoothly, Maria Grazia unaware of her husband’s philandering, but he then becomes obsessed with the possibility that, perhaps, she’s cheating on him, too. He becomes increasingly obsessed, even maniacal, stalking his wife, even trying to persuade a male friend to seduce her as a test, etc. The film also visualizes elaborate fantasies of his imaginings of her supposed unfaithfulness. She goes from bewildered by her husband’s behavior to genuinely terrified, especially when he drives them madly around town, demanding that she confess to the affair he certain she’s having.
The Magnificent Cuckold’s plot is nearly as old as the movies, reworked myriad times in the past, perhaps most memorably in Preston Sturges’s Unfaithfully Yours (1948) while Andrea’s obsessiveness has likewise been explored in other movies, perhaps none better than Albert Brooks’s brilliant Modern Romance (1981). For repressively Catholic Italy, such films were like a breath of fresh air in their amusing honestly while, abroad, their comparative raciness was a big draw, though today the film seems so tame it could almost be rated “G.” The picture is funny if not hilarious, despite many amusing moments: my favorite has Andrea clandestinely listening in on a conversation between Maria Grazia and a man in an adjacent room, she expressing her loneliness and he promising to see her often—except the man turns out to be a nun with a Beatrice Arthur-type deep voice. Nevertheless, the humor is softened by over-familiarity; the plot has been done myriad times, including as endless TV sitcom plots.
However, Tognazzi performs Andrea’s character arc with zeal; he’s entertaining throughout, while top-billed Claudia Cardinale, basically playing the devoted wife from start to finish (almost) is, as they say, easy on the eyes. The black-and-white cinematography by Armando Nannuzzi—whose diverse credits include Visconti’s The Damned, Bondarchuk’s Waterloo, Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive (during which he lost an eye), and Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound—is excellent, Nannzunni employing many evocative shots from Andrea’s convertible as it tools around the city. As a document of mid-1960s Italian architecture and fashions, the film dazzles.
Composer Trovajoli had scored music for disparate films including de Sica’s Two Women and Mario Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World, but the commedia all’italiana was a godsend for the composer, he virtually owning it the same way Akira Ifukube owned Japan kaiju eiga. His music for The Magnificent Cuckold is both funny and lively, complementing the film’s deliberate pacing and comedic build-up. It’s the kind of thing that had me looking for a soundtrack album online following the film.
Radiance Films’ new Blu-ray utilizes a new 4K restoration/transfer that’s about as perfect as these things get. The 1.85:1, black-and-white widescreen image is clean with no signs of damage, rich in detail with excellent blacks. Meanwhile, the uncompressed PCM audio (1.0 mono) is likewise very good supported by newly improved subtitles translation. The disc itself is Region A/B encoded.
Extras consist of a new interview with Italian cinema history expert Richard Dyer; a new visual essay by Italian cinema professor Rémi Fournier Lanzoni; an alternate color sequence apparently used for a re-edited, shorter rerelease of the film in 1971; and a booklet highlighted by an essay called This House in Not a Home: Love in the Time of the Economic Boom by Phuong Le.
The Magnificent Cuckold, seen today, is only moderately funny overall, but Tognazzi’s performance and the fine production values make it a worthwhile viewing experience.
- Stuart Galbraith IV