''The Magnificent Cuckold'' or ''Il magnifico cornuto'' is a 1964 Italian
sex comedy
Sex comedy, erotic comedy or more broadly sexual comedy is a genre in which comedy is motivated by sexual situations and love affairs. Although "sex comedy" is primarily a description of dramatic forms such as theatre and film, literary works such ...
film directed by
Antonio Pietrangeli
Antonio Pietrangeli (19 January 191912 July 1968) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He was a major practitioner of the Commedia all'italiana genre.
Biography
Pietrangeli was born in Rome. He started in the film industry by writing ...
and based on the
Belgian
Belgian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to, Belgium
* Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent
* Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German
*Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...
play ''
Le Cocu magnifique'' written by
Fernand Crommelynck
Fernand Crommelynck (19 November 1886 – 17 March 1970) was a Belgian dramatist. His work is known for farces in which commonplace weaknesses are developed into monumental obsessions.
Biography
He was born into a family of actors, the child ...
.
Plot
''The Magnificent Cuckold'' is about a hat tycoon who is ecstatically, if not hungrily, in love with his youthful wife. It is all blissful, that is, until our man, middle-aged and somewhat of a square among his blasé, upper-class friends to whom cuckoldry is a common practice, is seduced by one of them. At this point doubts and suspicions, like conscience, begin to plague him. If he could succumb to extramarital confections, why not his gorgeous mate? Quickly his love for his spouse degenerates beyond obsessive, into the realm of maniacal. He becomes madly concerned that his wife is cheating on him—even though she is not being unfaithful. When he looks at her it becomes obvious to him that she is a very attractive woman. And, all the men around her must be dying to be with her. Gnawed by jealously, he will imagine variations on catching her and her lover
red-handed. The film ends with the tycoon realizing his mistake.
Cast
*
Claudia Cardinale
Claude Joséphine Rose "Claudia" Cardinale (; born 15 April 1938) is an Italian actress. She has starred in some of the most iconic European films of the 1960s and 1970s, acting in Italian, French, and English.
Born and raised in La Goulette, a ...
... Maria Grazia
*
Ugo Tognazzi
Ugo Tognazzi (23 March 1922 – 27 October 1990) was an Italian actor, director, and screenwriter.
Early life
Tognazzi was born in Cremona, in northern Italy but spent his youth in various localities as his father was a travelling clerk fo ...
... Andrea Artusi
*
Bernard Blier
Bernard Blier (11 January 1916 – 29 March 1989) was a French character actor.
He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his father, a researcher at the Pasteur Institute, was posted at the time.
Life and career
His rotund features an ...
... Mariotti
*
Michèle Girardon
Michèle Girardon (9 August 1938 – 25 March 1975), sometimes credited as Michele Girardon, was a French actress.
Career
Born in Lyon, France, Girardon began acting as early as 1956, and had a small but noticeable role as a deaf-mute bea ...
... Cristiana
*
Paul Guers
Paul Guers (19 December 1927 – 27 November 2016) was a French film actor. He appeared in 70 films between 1955 and 1996. He starred in the 1963 film '' Kali Yug: Goddess of Vengeance''. He was born in Tours, France and died in Montsoreau.
...
... Gabriele
*
Philippe Nicaud
Philippe Nicaud (27 June 1926 – 19 April 2009) was a French actor and singer, was married to Christine Carère from 1957 till her death in 2008.
Nicaud appeared in the episode "Jet Trail" of the 1966 American television espionage drama seri ...
*
Gian Maria Volonté
Gian Maria Volonté (9 April 1933 – 6 December 1994) was an Italian actor, including roles in four Spaghetti Western films: Ramón Rojo in Sergio Leone's ''A Fistful of Dollars'' (1964) and El Indio in Leone's '' For a Few Dollars More'' ( ...
... Assessore
*
Susy Andersen
Susy Andersen (born Maria Antonietta Golgi; 20 April 1940 in Pola) is an Italian actress.
Filmography
External links
*
Italian actresses
1940 births
Living people
People from Pula
{{italy-actor-stub ...
... Wanda Mariotti
*
José Luis de Vilallonga
José is a predominantly Spanish and Portuguese form of the given name Joseph. While spelled alike, this name is pronounced differently in each language: Spanish ; Portuguese (or ).
In French, the name ''José'', pronounced , is an old vernacul ...
... Presidente
*
Ester Carloni
Ester Carloni (born as Esterina Carloni) ( 1904 – 6 April 1996) was an Italian actress. She appeared in more than forty films from 1958 to 1992.
Her siblings Pietro, Adelina (or Adele), Maria and Ettore were fellow actors. Her brother Piet ...
*
Edda Ferronao
Edda Ferronao is an Italian former stage, film and television actress.Bayman p. 241
Selected filmography
* ''March's Child'' (1957)
* '' Toto, Peppino and the Fanatics'' (1958)
* ''The Conqueror of the Orient'' (1960)
* ''Fountain of Trevi' ...
*
Olindo De Turres
*
Elvira Tonelli
*
Antonio Gerini
*
Liliana Salvioni
Reception
''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' published a positive, detailed review and stated ''Il magnifico cornuto'' was "mildy amusing".
See also
*
Cuckold (film)
References
External links
*
1965 films
1960s Italian-language films
Commedia all'italiana
Films directed by Antonio Pietrangeli
Adultery in films
Italian films based on plays
Films with screenplays by Ruggero Maccari
1960s Italian films
{{1960s-Italy-film-stub