Murder and divorce: a double and triple feature suggestion

Dustin Hoffman acting Italian.

I'm sitting here listening to the Thought Spiral podcast with Andy Kindler and J Elvis Weinstein. They're discussing the movie Adam's Rib (1949). Katharine Hepburn plays a lawyer defending a woman who opened fire on her husband when she caught him in bed with another woman. I haven't seen that movie since I was in grade school, but my memory was that, in those days, a man would doing the same thing would likely have been deemed temporarily insane and gotten away with it. Hepburn's character argues in court that the woman in this case should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, too.

Weinstein didn't believe it. He didn't believe there was ever a time when a man could get away with shooting his wife.

I heard of a case in the '70's where a Southern sheriff got away with murdering his wife this way, so I think the movie was probably accurate for the most part.

And I was aware that this was apparently the case in Italy. I base this on what I saw of the movie Divorce Italian Style (1961). Divorce was illegal in Italy until 1970. The premise of the movie is that a husband (Marcello Mastrianni) wants to end his marriage. Divorce is illegal, but in Italy, if a husband finds his wife with another man, he can murder them both and plead temporary insanity. So the husband tries to manipulate his wife into sleeping with another man so he can murder them and marry his girlfriend.

I also watched Alfredo, Alfredo (Italy, 1972), starring Dustin Hoffman. I saw it about thirty years ago on VHS. I must not understand method acting. He was in this thing speaking English while everyone else spoke Italian. His lines were dubbed in Italian in a voice that sounded nothing like his. He plays a fellow named Alfredo who rushes into marriage. It doesn't work out well. Legally he can leave his wife, but he can be arrested if he's caught sleeping with another woman. His wife, on the other hand, can do what she want since he left her.

So. If you want to know about Italian laws against divorce, watch those two movies if they're available.

And you want to feel less smug about how backward the Italians were, make it a triple feature and watch Adam's Rib.