Ghosts - Italian Style (1967) We wouldn't declare ourselves any authority on Italian comedies, since we haven't seen that many.
The few we have seen bore a certain similarity to each other.....in that they all attempt to generate their laughs by having most of the cast in a constant state of near hysteria......
This one's no exception. And in all honesty, there's only one reason we sat through the entire 93 minutes of it....
To gaze upon the eternal, almost indescribable beauty and charm of Sophia Loren. With a lesser presence in this role, we might have only made it through the first 5 minutes....tops.
Sophia's character Maria has two men vying for her attention here........her husband Pasquale (Vittorio Gassman),a chronically unemployed opera tenor with big ambition and little money.....and her most ardent admirer/stalker Alfredo (Mario Adorf), a wealthy benefactor of the catholic orphanage where he and Maria were raised.
Pasquale, an expansive, high strung extrovert, moves himself and Maria into a supposedly haunted mansion with the too-good-to-be-true offer of free rent.
We can't even begin to describe the absurd, farcical complications that ensue, as the madly lovestruck Alfredo arranges to sneak himself into the mansion inside a wardrobe and then gets mistaken by Pasquale for one of the mansion's ghosts. Yeah,,,,,right.
More lunacy ensues, with Vittorio Gassman and Mario Adorf trying to top each other in wildly hammy eye bulging, hand-wringing and hyper craziness.......(imagine Abbott and Costello if both of them were Costello).
Sophia Loren, bless her, looks stunning as always and deftly rolls with the loony punches here, since she's forced to act as straight-woman to both men who carry on like they're off their meds. It isn't until her final few scenes that she's allowed to display her own comedic chops......and to no one's surprise, she's far funnier than either of the guys.
Despite the film's cast almost bursting their blood vessels in a frenzy, the pace never seems as fast as it should......but if you watch it closely, some of the lines and situations that zip by are actually funny. And it's a kick to see Mario Adorf decked out in golden blonde hair and exquisitely tailored suits, since we mainly knew him from playing dark, hulking villains and creeps in countless Eurotrash junky movies.
And for a cherry on top, foreign film fans will love the surprise superstar cameo that caps off the movie with a perfect, appropriate gag.
Though filmed in a separate English language version, you'll still have to adjust to the usual post-synched soundtrack favored by Italian filmmakers, which always makes everybody sound like they're dubbed in anyway.....
A few scattered laughs here and there, but it's hard to recommend this one to anyone except Sophia Loren completists. Everyone else might want to hit 'pause' to think it over....2 stars (**)....(and you'd better believe our two stars are strictly for Sophia.....)
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