‘The Girl with a Pistol’ or — Monica Vitti… Goes to Sheffield City Centre?!

I think what I love most about 1960’s Italian cinema are all the colourful, exotic and romantic associations that automatically spring to mind: Tony Blair’s father-in-law, Mike Baldwin from ‘Coronation Street’ and Rotherham bus depot. Hang on! Am I watching the right movie?

Mario Monicelli’s ‘The Girl with a Pistol’ (1968), or ‘La Ragazza con la Pistola’, concerns Assunta Patanè (Monica Vitti), a young Sicilian woman who has her honour taken from her by the man she loves who then promptly buggers off to Edinburgh to avoid having to take her as his wife. This shame now leaves both Assunta and her sisters unable to marry and according to local tradition the only way her family’s name can be restored is if Assunta travels to Britain and kills the rascal. With a pistol.

As she follows her quarry across the UK, from Edinburgh to Sheffield to Bath then finally London, and is exposed to a less archaic world than her own she gradually realises there might be an alternative way of living available than the one she’s accustomed to.

Much like Pietro Germi’s ‘Divorce Italian Style’ (1961) Mario Monicelli’s film deals with the outdated Italian custom of honour killing, something that was still tolerated by some Italian authorities at the time, with a razor sharp satirical eye. This humour is helped by the fact that Monicelli makes Assunta herself somewhat culpable in her situation (she initially appears to have had an adolescent view of masculinity drilled into her that’s fixated on the demonstration of power that takes her a while to shift) as even though the rules in Sicily are weighed in favour of men it’s the women who seemingly enforce these customs so this isn’t just a problem limited to the Sicilian male but Sicilian society as a whole.

So when Assunta arrives in Edinburgh she isn’t just a naive fish-out-of-water adjusting to a new environment but also an unstoppable, black-clad Terminator, albeit a highly inept one, intent on violent murder so we never feel she’s simply a victim. As she meets various people, encounters new ways of thinking and more open social attitudes (at one point she even visits a gay bar) so we see her gradually grow, mature and develop as a person.

This evolution is nicely reflected in the way she dresses as (almost) throughout the entire film she constantly wears the traditional Sicilian black but as her adventure goes on her outfits almost imperceptibly become more chic, tailored and cut from modern materials. It’s a cool way of visually signifying inner change, even if it’s an inner change she herself isn’t quite aware of yet.

What’s also cool is Monicelli’s direction and Carlo Di Palma’s cinematography with the film boasting some impressive framing and compositions and they both do a great job of capturing not just the colour of Sixties Britain but also the dirt and grime (there’s a shot of Sheffield where the city is so caked in soot, smoke and grit I kept expecting to see Frodo and Sam to pop up looking for Mount Doom). There’s also a clear contrast between Assunta’s two worlds in terms of visual dynamism with the UK having the look of a fast moving place where everything is pushing forward whereas back in Sicily everything appears temporally static, frozen and stuck, apart from the sewing machines being thrown out of first-floor windows that is.

Vitti herself is wonderful and her performance as Assunta gives her plenty of moments for verbal and physical comedy, her overly histrionic wails and lamentations of grief and indignation being especially hilarious. There’s also some comic fantasy sequences were Assunta imagines either exacting her lethal revenge or the terrible fate that awaits her back home if she fails and they’re great opportunities for Monicelli to indulge in some arresting and stylistic flourishes.

‘The Girl with a Pistol’ is not only a very funny film about the serious need for change in Italian society but also a fascinating look at 1960’s Britain through a European eye. It might not be up there with Monicelli’s best work but, then again, considering he was responsible for some of the greatest comedies ever made that’s not much of a slight on this movie.

And if you only know Monica Vitti from her emotionally austere work with Antonioni and have never seen her do comedy then you’re in for both an epiphany and a delightful surprise.