Review: Luigi Comencini’s Murder Mystery The Sunday Woman on Radiance Films Blu-ray

Comencini’s film is absorbing, frequently amusing, and exceedingly well directed.

The Sunday WomanLuigi Comenicini’s The Sunday Woman makes for an intriguing blend of police procedural and comedy of manners. It isn’t really a giallo, despite an investigation into a bizarre murder that fuels further misdeeds. As a satire of Turin’s upper classes, it isn’t nearly as trenchant, let alone grim, as other examples of commedia all’italiana like Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso or Pietro Germi’s Seduced and Abandoned, though it does share their preoccupation with character types that border on the grotesque. Taken on its own terms, the film is absorbing, frequently amusing, and exceedingly well directed by Comencini, who keeps things moving with admirably brisk efficiency.

When sleazy architect Garrone (Claudio Gora) is found beaten to death with a large stone phallus (shades of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange), Commissioner Santamaria (Marcello Mastroianni) takes up the case. A handy clue soon puts him on the trail of bored upper-crust housewife Anna Carla Dosio (Jacqueline Bisset) and her good friend Massimo Campi (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who had “targeted” Garrone in a sort of mischievous word game. Wordplay occurs throughout the film, running the gamut from loaded (and often filthy) double entendres to more sophisticated witticisms. Language also works to situate characters in terms of class or regional dialect, thus distinguishing insiders from outsiders.

Also like A Clockwork Orange, The Sunday Woman has something to say about the function of art in modern society. The former film paints a despairing picture of the complete inability of cultural products to “improve” humanity in any way, instead depicting how lofty expressions of unity and brotherhood can be perverted into nothing more than methods of torture. The Sunday Woman also recognizes the harmful effects of an art object when wielded with malice (witness that stone phallus), albeit in a far more down-to-earth manner.

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The Sunday Woman is in fact obsessed with objets d’art and their value within a system of exchange. The motive for the central murder involves the additional worth conferred on a piece of property by the presence of an ancient artwork. And not for nothing does the film’s central set piece take place in the Balon, Turin’s massive open-air flea market, where one-of-a-kind items are duplicated as needed, and antique paintings can be signed by whichever artist is currently fetching the most on the open market. Much like the murderer does to their victims, The Sunday Woman bonks you over the head with these notions.

What’s more, the film, as written by Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli, raises the idea that the very act of murder can be considered aesthetic—or, at the very least, committed out of aesthetic considerations. It’s a concept that Massimo mentions to Santamaria early on when he admits that he derives this belief from reading Thomas De Quincey’s satirical essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” It’s thus doubly ironic that the film refuses to actually depict either of its murders, merely consoling itself with showing the bloody aftermath.

De Quincey’s writings would be a substantial influence on Dario Argento’s Suspiria, whose cinematographer, Luciano Tovoli, also lensed Comencini’s film. That, though, isn’t the only point of comparison between The Sunday Woman and Argento’s work, even though, as mentioned earlier, this film most decidedly doesn’t play out like your typical giallo. For one, both The Sunday Woman and Deep Red turn on the importance of an artwork to unravelling the central mystery. Then, too, the murderer is revealed to be a woman in both films, though in one her motive is purely socioeconomic, while in the other it’s more disturbingly psychosexual.

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If The Sunday Woman has anything serious to say about sexuality, it’s that those who suffer the most in the larger scheme of things are those who “love not wisely but too well.” This certainly holds true for both of the murder victims. Others, whether it’s the cynical Anna Carla, or the comfortably closeted Massimo, continue to thrive because they know how to keep their passions compartmentalized. Not for nothing does the film end with the two of them driving off into the future, almost casually resuming their carefree word games. Murder in all its messy details may not actually constitute a fine art, but it certainly does help pass the time for the idle rich.

Image/Sound

Radiance offers a lustrous 2K restoration of The Sunday Woman available in both full frame (mandated by the producers for TV broadcast) and 1.85:1 widescreen formats. Needless to say, the widescreen image looks more cinematic, so that’s probably the way to go, but it’s always nice to have options. Overall the image boasts some decent depth and clarity of fine details. Colors look warm and deeply saturated, flesh tones lifelike, and grain well managed. The sole audio option is an Italian Master Audio two-channel mono mix that clearly delivers the dialogue and keeps Ennio Morricone’s playfully jaunty score front and center.

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Extras

The bonus materials included by Radiance are few but choice. A new interview with Italian cinema expert Richard Dyer delves into the source novel, the script’s light touch, and how the film handles themes of sex and class. An archival interview from 2008 with cinematographer Luciano Tovoli covers how he became a DP, working on The Sunday Woman after gaining renown for shooting Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger, how he got assigned to The Sunday Woman, and his professional relationship with Luigi Comencini. In a new interview, academic and screenwriter Giacomo Scarpelli discusses the life and work of his father, Furio Scarpelli, who scripted The Sunday Woman alongside his regular writing partner, Agenore Incrocci. There’s a brief 1976 interview with Jean-Louis Trintignant from the French TV show Allons au cinéma, in which the actor outlines The Sunday Woman’s jaundiced views of wealth and class. Also included is a booklet featuring new and archival essays on the film.

Overall

Absorbing and often amusing, Luigi Comencini’s genre-blending The Sunday Woman receives a sparkling new transfer and several choice extras from Radiance Films.

Score: 
 Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Aldo Reggiani, Maria Teresa Albani, Omero Antonutti, Gigi Ballista, Fortunato Cecilia, Claudio Gora, Franco Nebbia, Lina Volonghi  Director: Luigi Comencini  Screenwriter: Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli  Distributor: Radiance Films  Running Time: 1975 min  Rating: R  Year: 1975  Release Date: May 2, 2023  Buy: Video

Budd Wilkins

Budd Wilkins's writing has appeared in Film Journal International and Video Watchdog. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

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