'TIS A PITY SHE'S A WHORE

Italy, 1971, 109 minutes, Colour.
Charlotte Rampling, Oliver Tobias, Fabio Testi.
Directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi.

After Shakespeare, the Jacobean dramatists wrote highly melodramatic revenge tragedies of dark passions and obsessions, of extreme violence and bloodletting. In strong imaginative verse, operatic gestures and set speeches, they presented a wintry world of the borders between happiness and madness. Giuseppe Patroni Griffi visualises John Ford's melodrama in stylised beauty difficult to surpass, and in a welter of visual violence that terrifies and disgusts. Most of the film could be strongly recommended for its exquisite colour design and photography, its attempt to explore the courtly, religious, emotional Jacobean world, but the final 20 minutes' violence puts it well beyond the capacities of the average audience.

1. The bishop spoke the words used for the title. What were the implications?

2. The film was a stylised version of an English 17th Century play. Did it establish its "conventions" well and work well within these conventions and their style? dialogue, melodramatic and poetic conversations, stylised acting, posturing and facial close-ups, colours, music.

3. The film, beautiful in its photography and colour, was wintry. Did this add to the mood and theme of the film?

4. What were the standards of this Italian society? How did they govern that action of the play? Giovanni - student, brother and "natural" love, his torment, religious counsel. penance, desperation, happiness and unhappiness, forced by society to conceal the truth, jealous, obsessed, mad, murdering, Annabella, enclosed life at home, artificial life arranged marriages. love for her brother, consummation, decision about marriage, concealment, Soranzo and consummation of marriage, death, willingly, Soranzo, arrogant nobility, friendship, arranged marriage with forced love contrasting with Giovanni's natural love, wooing and wedding, wedding night, consummation, hurt pride, hatred, destruction, vengeance, Bonaventuro, humble, friar, caught in his religious world with the harsh dilemma of life, counselling desperately, seeking hierarchical advice, disillusion with himself and the situation, refusing to communicate with Giovanni, the Father typical noble, arranged marriages, double standards, lack of understanding, death.

5. What moral and emotional crises did each character have to go through? Were they really resolved?

6. What kind of brutal world was this, especially for the finale? What was the meaning of such bloodshed? (Was it portrayed appropriately in the film?)

7. What were the meanings of 'love' and 'hate'?

8. Comment on the visual beauty and what it contributed to the film. The musical score? the panelled palace, candles, corridors, snow, frost, fog, the sand and white flags, horses, water, Venice, the wedding, the banquet, the poverty and rain with the friars, the final execution of vengeance.

9. What was implied about: State order, religious order, religious penance (aggravating what it should cure), religious compromise, friendship, love, what is "natural"? hatred, forgiveness, fate, death.