The Taming of the Scoundrel (1980)

Italian cinema of 1980 had a reliable formula, and The Taming of the Scoundrel follows it with the diligence of a man stacking firewood. Adriano Celentano plays Elia, a wealthy farmer whose misanthropy is presented as a lifestyle rather than a condition. He resists his housekeeper's matrimonial scheming. He splits logs to manage feelings he cannot name. Ornella Muti arrives with a broken-down car and a fiancé waiting elsewhere, and the machinery of courtship begins its slow, creaking turn. The film is loosely indebted to Shakespeare, though the debt is paid in comic incident instead of verse.

Assessing this for contemporary social content is a brief exercise. The cast is entirely Italian, the romance entirely heterosexual, and the politics entirely absent. Elia's wealth is a prop, not a target. The vineyard exists to be looked at. When Lisa invents reasons to extend her stay, she is performing the work of a romantic plot device, not of an ideological program. The comedy of the final act involves a basketball match, a public address system, and a marriage proposal delivered at volume. Nothing is being argued. Everything is being enjoyed.

The film was the highest grossing picture on the Italian market for the 1980/81 season and moved fifty-six million tickets in the Soviet Union, which tells us more about appetites than about agendas. It is a screwball courtship comedy with a grumpy man, a determined woman, and a house that shakes at the end. There is no sermon here, no lesson, no accounting of historical wrongs. Just Celentano glowering, Muti persisting, and a closing song that charted for sixteen weeks. We classify it accordingly, and we move on.