To the 40th anniversary of The Taming of the Scoundrel

On December 20, 1980, the comedy film "Il bisbetico domato (The Taming of the Scoundrel)" directed by Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia (Pipolo) was released on the screens of Italian cinemas.

Despite the fact that, as noted by the Russian film critic Vladimir Sergeev, the film was shot without any special claims, albeit with a good sense of humor, in the first year of its demonstration in Italy it was watched by more than 9 million moviegoers (or 16% of the Italian population). As a result, the film grossed about 12 billion lire, or approximately $ 10.5 million, which is equivalent to the current approximately 32 million dollars. With these figures, the film took second place in the Italian box office for the 1980/1981 season.

However, the main success awaited the film "The Taming of the Scoundrel" in the Soviet Union. In our country, this film, albeit pretty cut, was watched in 1983 by 56 million moviegoers, or more than 21% of the population. Perhaps this success was to some extent due to the fact that by 1983 the Soviet cinema audience was quite familiar with the work of Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia (Pipolo). In 1979, with a huge success - 52 million cinema viewers - the film of these authors "Il signor Robinson, mostruosa storia d'amore e d'avventure (Mr. Robinson)" was shown on the screens of Soviet cinemas, and even earlier, in 1973, Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia (Pipolo) co-authored the script for the film by Eldar Ryazanov and Franco Prospero "Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia".

It is no coincidence that we have cited in such detail the data on the box office results of the film "The Taming of the Scoundrel". The fact is that analyzing the data of the sites IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, we came to the conclusion that this film remained practically unknown to the American cinema audience. We have repeatedly pointed out the lack of awareness of American moviegoers about Soviet films about the Second World War. But this, at least, is understandable, since it is due to purely ideological reasons - the desire of the American censorship to hide the role of the Soviet Union in the victory over Nazi Germany. But what the Italian comedy film did not please the American film distributors is completely incomprehensible.

References to the lack of commercial potential, which are often used to explain the absence of Soviet war films in the American film distribution, are absolutely inapplicable in this case. This is what we wanted to show by citing data on the audience success of this film both in Italy and in the USSR.

We can only assume that the reason for not allowing the Italian comedy "The Taming of the Scoundrel" to the American film market was the extraordinary sagacity of the American censors, who already in the 80s of the last century foresaw that forty years later this film would certainly be subject to restrictions. Exactly for the same reasons as the masterpiece of American cinema "Gone with the Wind". Namely, for the reason that the role of the servant, and therefore the representative of the oppressed race, is played in the film by a black actress.

It could be assumed that the prejudice of the American censors towards this film arose due to the brilliant foresight that Ornella Muti, an actress with Russian roots, 35 years later, for the sake of participating in a charity evening together with the then Prime Minister of Russia V.V. Putin, would be ready to sit down to jail and pay a fine of 600 euros. But this is unlikely, since many other films with the participation of this actress have calmly and successfully been shown and shown in the American film distribution.

But seriously, even today the film "The Taming of the Scoundrel" directed by Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia (Pipolo) is very popular among moviegoers, at least not less than in the 80s of the last century. 79% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave this movie ratings from 8 to 10. And 30% of users rated the movie with the highest score - "ten".

With that said, FilmGourmand rated "The Taming of the Scoundrel" at 8.374, making it 382nd in the Golden Thousand.