Naples on the Hudson Sophia Loren Hollywood couldn’t help but notice. Hollywood is like a magpie, delighted with everything beautiful, luxurious and brilliant, and immediately wants this beautiful and brilliant whistle – regardless of whether it comes in handy or not. It is easy to imagine that such an amazing beauty actress like Lauren, also very talented, wanted to see in America. Among other things, Hollywood needed to establish ties with European filmmakers, which, in turn, needed a massive overseas audience. Bridges were built, horizons were expanded. Not always successful, but, nevertheless, many films have grown up on this expanding horizons, and Lady Liberty is among them. In Italy, the film was called "Mortadella" - after the name of the sausage, because of which, in fact, the whole fuss broke out. In the United States, this name was considered too specific and the local public is not clear and renamed with the characteristic Yankee pathos “Lady Liberty”, drawing on the poster Lauren herself in the form of the Statue of Liberty, ironically sticking instead of a torch – a plate with pasta, and instead of the constitution – a bunch of sausages.
Sophia Loren was already a global star by that time, mainly thanks to her husband, visionary producer Carlo Ponti, who diligently selected projects with the greatest international resonance for her, and, if there were none, launched them himself. His company “Les Films Concordia” (responsible, among other things, for such masterpieces with Lauren as “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” and “Marriage in Italian”) entered into a number of contracts with American distributors and production companies for the creation of several films, among which was a comedy about an Italian who flew to New York to get married and recognize America from a slightly different side from conventional concepts. Ponti invited Mario Monicelli to stage this film - a famous and venerable American director with five Oscar nominations in his pocket. Sophia Loren already had an Oscar for "Chochara" and a nomination for "Marriage in Italian" - this success had to be reinforced. It would seem that the stars came together as well as possible.
But whether the eternal greed of Italian filmmakers (read the memoirs of Ryazanov, he there very colorfully describes the creation of the film “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia”), seeking to save on everything, including the stars and advertising, or the wrong script, thematically alien to the American viewer, or quite unsuccessfully chosen for Sophia Loren role, but appeared in 1971 film went unnoticed, and critics who still bothered to go to it, grumbled. The New York Times, in particular, put it in the sense that “the humor of the film and the intellect of its creators never find common ground” and that “no actress but Sophia Loren has managed to get out of such a pile of film scum with such triumph.”
Some critics were right. The film is not bad at all, but it is puzzling. What did the authors expect? That Monicelli’s evil irony about the “Land of Liberty,” which is in fact only an illusion, a realm of bureaucracy and cheap sensations, will appeal to American viewers? That they would be interested in the satire of left-wing Italian radicals minting a step under red banners, eventually escaped to America and opened Italian diners there, continuing the formation of “little Italy”? That the down-to-earth, typically social story of an Italian woman losing her ideals (perhaps the whole of Italy is conspired under the heroine of Lauren, just parting in the early 70s with the ideals of the “golden age” in economics) will find a response in the souls of well-fed hamburger eaters.
The bitter conclusions of Monicelli from the funny adventures of a beautiful Italian woman, faced in the very first days in America with bureaucracy, humiliation of human dignity, the hunt for unhealthy sensations, the desire to make a show out of everything, with Americans who seemed to be strong, free and enterprising people from across the ocean, but in fact turned out to be the same as everyone else - with a bunch of problems, debts, fears and complexes. And the "Big Apple" met the heroine of Lauren not with skyscrapers of glass and steel, propping up the sky, but dirty slums, the same as in her native Naples, where the same miserable, dulled, downtrodden people-rats live. And the men she meets are so far from screen heroes like Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Marlon Brando. And the mattress-customsman, who lives with his mother his 5th decade, and an infantile married journalist, and her own fiancé, who has learned to think in “American categories”, that is, he refused everything he once lived and dreamed of for the sake of one single profit, an almighty dollar, for which everyone is ready to lie down with bones, fulfilling the “American dream”.
Yes, people here are free to marry and divorce, but are they happier? Monicelli draws disappointing conclusions. A couple of years later, Nanny Loy will talk about this much more subtle and tragically in the film I’ll Put America in Order and Come Back, where Paolo Villaggio will play incredibly truthful. Monicelli lacked bile, sincerity, or maybe a sense of humor or courage. The film looks good, but it does not touch anything. People are the same everywhere and live the same way. Yeah, a stupid sausage stick can change your life. Yes, sometimes we betray the ideals of youth. Yeah. And? Was it worth it to invite one of the best actresses in Italy? Despite the fact that part of the story is deeply personal for Lauren (she and Ponty married secretly in Mexico, because the producer was married and had no right to divorce), there is something fake in the fact that the employee of the sausage factory is played by one of the most beautiful women in the world and one of the most expensive actresses of cinema.
In addition, Ponty was clearly stingy about a decent environment for his muse. Although there are two outstanding stars in the film, this stardom will come to them much later. This is about Danny DeVito and Susan Sarandon, who played small episodes. As for DeVito, he was amusing in the role of a short congressman, but there was also some “courage” in his game. And Sarandon appeared only for a moment as the ex-wife of the unfortunate journalist. He was, by the way, played by William Devane, who did everything he could to revive the image of a typical loser chewed by a metropolis, but clearly shy of his Oscar-winning partner and in his place Marcello Mastroiani or even Dustin Hoffman, inaccessible to greedy Italian filmmakers, would be much more appropriate.
Lady Liberty is flesh of the flesh of the time in which it was created. He reflected the hopes, fears, ideals and shattered dreams of his era. But he didn't do it truthfully and deeply enough to become a social event and not funny enough to become just a good comedy. Although in the best episodes he alternates Italian expressiveness and emotionality with American cynicism and humor. However, the total amount is still less than individual terms.
7 out of 10