Far from the homeland: Dishonour and redemption in Mario Monicelli's The Girl with the Gun

Prophetic pursuits from days gone by

In the same way that an athlete sprints forward, keeping their balance in the process, Assunta Patanè – dishonoured in her native land – runs her own race and, thanks to the flux of events, succeeds in resolving her inner conflict of a Sicilian woman in London. Time is the element that will determine her achievement, if we consider that it is in the steady flow of the intermediate stages that Assunta asserts her personality and achieves her full potential. Her manner of expression between two diametrically opposed nights – that of the rape and that of her ultimate emancipation – reflects the troubled equilibrium of a submissive woman steering towards the other extreme, a qualitative leap towards a catharsis attained step by step, per gradus debitos, thus guaranteeing the success of this typical film of the Commedia all’italiana. This is, incidentally, a genre considered by critics to have been inaugurated by Mario Monicelli himself with his film I soliti ignoti (1958), by virtue of the fact that it reflects many distinctive traits of the typical Italian post-war individual. Indeed, prior to the 1950s, the disastrous effects of the Second World War on Italian society had been highlighted by the protagonists of Italian Neorealism, whose intent was to portray, in particular through the cinema, the precarious everyday life and the dire effects of the war suffered by the population, stricken with deep grief, poverty, despair and oppression. What is uppermost in Neorealist cinema are stories relating to the poor and to the proletariat class – so dear to Gramsci – who struggle desperately to make ends meet.

Now, if the hallmark of Neorealist films consisted in a kind of thematic solemnity, that of the Commedia all’italiana distinguished itself for its vein of humour aimed at making amends for the lack of light-hearted elements in Neorealism, with the astonishing effects of an unconventional, indiscriminate discourse paying scarce attention to dogmas. This novel form of comedy is fired by a type of caustic wit that we could easily dismiss as cynical if we were to endorse the opinion of some cinema historians that the Commedia all’italiana features comic key themes, characters and situations that elsewhere would constitute the ingredients of a tragic discourse. According to Moliterno (2008: 91), while exacerbating the hopes and aspirations of the characters, the Commedia all’italiana ultimately ensures a happy ending, in compliance with the tenets of traditional comedy. As a general principle, this might indeed be true, unless of course we were to exclude later examples of this genre, such as Alberto Sordi's Amore mio aiutami (1969), marked by sorrowful tones and moments of grief that, unfortunately, do not culminate in a happy ending. ¹

Mario Monicelli's La ragazza con la pistola was released in 1968. The cast featured Monica Vitti in the role of Assunta Patanè, Carlo Giuffrè in that of Vincenzo Macaluso and Stanley Baker as Doctor Osborne. The film opens in Sicily and tells the story of Assunta, who is in love with Vincenzo. The walk from her home to the chemist's, in the company of her mother and her cousin Concetta, turns out to be an unfortunate experience, as Assunta is forcefully carried away by two men who take her to an abandoned farmhouse, where Vincenzo is lying in wait – apparently not for her, because, as soon as he sees her on the threshold, totally distraught and unwilling to collaborate, he gives the impression that the wrong woman has been abducted. The woman he wants is Concetta. However, certain details pertaining to sex are, after all, of minor consequence, so Vincenzo decides to go to bed with Assunta anyway, who wakes up only to find him gone. As rightly affirmed some years ago by Jacqueline Reich in her engaging book on the Latin lover, in the Sicilian community the honour of a family depends on the strict preservation of the physical and metaphorical confines of the family: property, masculinity and, above all, female virginity (Reich, 2004: 53). Assunta's dishonour comes unexpectedly and is particularly problematic because in Sicily ‘misfortune’ is tantamount to ‘guilt’; the night spent with Vincenzo Macaluso has sanctioned her perdition and shame has fallen onto the entire family. The episode is of such gravity as to place the woman's future under an ill-fated star and to determine a commissioned murder. To restore her honour, Assunta is equipped with a gun and packed off to England on a train, on the tracks of the traitor. Such is her determination to kill him that she hounds him as far as Scotland, Sheffield, Bath, London and Brighton; the various stages of a pilgrimage that constitutes the backdrop to the misadventures of this unrepentant girl with hardly any experience as regards the practical aspects of life.

As previously stated, following the canons of the Commedia all’italiana, ‘dishonour’ has to be converted into comedy. In this case, Assunta – convinced that she is in love with Vincenzo and that her feelings are requited – yields to his desires in the name of love. The problem is that her sentimental illusion is short-lived; the girl cannot bring herself to accept that she has been rebuffed, and this is what constitutes her true dishonour. Yet, ultimately, optimism gains the upper hand, because the Commedia all’italiana – which originates in response to the tragic excesses of Neorealist films populated by poor miserable wretches – aims to diverge into the farcical and psychodramatic spheres, on the strength of the fact that the spectator, no longer a prey to the horrors of the war and of recent history, hungers for entertainment. We are perfectly aware of the fact that, with the exception of Roma città aperta, the keystones of Neorealist cinema, which did, however, distinguish themselves for their linguistic innovations (Rossellini's Paisà, De Sica's Ladri di biciclette, Visconti's La terra trema), failed to receive a warm welcome in Italy; beyond Italy, they were highly successful with the public and critics alike. How can we explain this? In the Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture, Peter Bondanella considers that one of the paradoxes of Neorealism lies in the fact that the average Italian was not concerned with seeing themselves portrayed on the screen, but instead preferred watching films produced in Hollywood (Bondanella, 2001: 223). Considering this, we might be tempted to think that the Commedia all’italiana owed its success to the fact that it offered a low-cost version of the art of wretchedness, in representing a spicy, humorous version of serious issues and venomous tones, while at the same time offering entertainment to the public. As if to say: if life is evil and humankind is malevolent, let's just laugh it off.

However, with reference to Monicelli's film, there is an important detail to be taken into consideration: the tragic element is nonetheless preserved. Indeed, for the Tuscan film producer, elements such as death, corpses, wakes, widows and funerals do not jar in a ‘light-hearted series’ if they take on comic, ironic or grotesque tones. Let us consider the episode in which Assunta is accompanied to Vincenzo's fake tomb: amid furious screaming and thunderous yelling, every word pronounced with a Sicilian accent becomes dispersed in the tumult of the loud-mouthed ‘widow’ beating her fists on the grave. That is to say that the woeful tints converted into humour pervade the entire film, where death forms the basis of the tenacity of the ‘consensually’ seduced and ‘unilaterally’ abandoned protagonist, who is thus determined to restore her personal honour with the murder of Vincenzo Macaluso. In the film, the gun is not only the symbol of this uncompromising determination, but is above all an unconditional reflex of the omnipresence of death, always ready to leap out of the handbag she drags around with her all over Britain. On the strictly diegetic plane, the weapon is also instrumental to the burlesque element: when Assunta lies in wait like a shaded siren outside the ‘Capri’ restaurant, and takes out the gun as she scans the tables, she handles it clumsily, as if she were fiddling with her grandfather's dentures. She has no idea as to how to grip it and, the more she tries to conceal it, the more she puts it on display. The object becomes the driving force of the comedy itself at the very moment when a drunkard catches sight of her and wants to buy the gun. The macabre implications traditionally associated with murder fade into humour the minute the man catches sight of the gun and starts laughing, thus pinning a farcical connotation to the weapon. For Jean Gili, the qualitative intensity of the Commedia all’italiana lies precisely in its ability to tackle grievous themes by drawing from the alembic of amusement (Gili, 2006: 86).

Somewhere in space (and in the individual)

Moving on now to the locations in which the core of the comedy takes root, we shall recall that, in the film, space is in continual evolution, based as it is on geographical variation. The story opens in Sicily – maybe it would be more appropriate to speak of Trinacria, the ancient name of Sicily – amidst a mass of little white houses, heaped together like the debris deposited after a flood. The peeling whitewashed walls and the archaic facades of the houses – reflected in the hybrid combination of sea and cement – reveal a culture of abandonment. Yet this colouring embodies nuances: those of an archaic era to which Sicily has been relegated. Were it not for the presence of streetlamps, we would be under the impression of having been projected into the Neolithic era. The lack of a minimum trace of modernity in the village makes it sad and austere, but there circulates a supreme power, borne by a storm-swept wind. We are struck by the notion of an instinctive force embedded in the landscape, as we hear the voices of the descendants of the Erinyes and the whistling of the wind among the walls of the village houses, where human beings are nothing but a creeping, frail, almost remote presence.

In his book on Trinacria post 1713, with reference to Sicily in the 1960s, Denis Mack Smith states that, throughout the region, a considerable number of houses lacked running water and drainage systems, and almost a quarter of the population was illiterate, especially in the interior, dominated by an ancestral mentality founded on superstition (Smith, 1968: 542–543). At first glance, in Monicelli's film, Sicily is depicted as a territory in its death throes. The witches and sorceries mentioned by Smith in his book are not manifest, but the primordial spirit of the place is plain to see. Let us consider the abduction of Assunta, when Vincenzo's henchmen take her to the farmhouse where he is lying in wait. There is nothing more archaic, nothing more rustic, amid all the stones and the sidereal silence broken only by the bleating of the sheep. Monicelli refers to this place as ‘a stunningly beautiful wild farmstead’; his obvious intention was to place Arcadian beauty – prevalently idyllic – at the core of that crucial sequence. In the process, the film director applied a hermeneutic approach, given that the spaces featured in the film are functional to the identity of the characters. John David Rhodes and Elena Gorfinkel are convinced of this; in their work entitled Taking Place – Location and the Moving Image, they consider every location, while remaining a prerogative of human subjectivity, to be not only a constituent force, but above all a constructive power (Rhodes and Gorfinkel, 2011: ix). This statement needs to be interpreted in association with the words of Nicholas Entrikin, who maintains that location and culture are valuable elements for the construction of both individual and collective identity. An identity therefore that, as a reflection of space, in the Ragazza con la pistola entails the formative voyage of the protagonist subjected to an unforeseen metamorphosis from a ‘Sicilian girl with a braid’ to a ‘woman of the world’, once she has left her native village to embrace a genuine British rhapsody.

Let us now examine in detail this reshuffled identity. Assunta's carnal experience of going to bed with Vincenzo has kindled primordial instincts: following her abduction, the girl returns home, only to discover that the Erinye-like women in her family are by no means indulgent towards her; on the contrary, distressed by the fact that she has been dishonoured, they inform her that she had better tie a stone around her neck and throw herself into the sea. After all, this is a tragic solution already echoed in Assunta's words when, even before returning to her family, she yields to the monitory dogmatism of ‘better dead than dishonoured’, in strict compliance with the traditional Sicilian Weltanschauung.

From Sicily the narrative flow spills over into Scotland, where the protagonist first arrives by train. Though shot inside the station, the scene of her arrival differs from that of her departure; the latter is also set near the railway platforms, but it focuses on the close-ups of Assunta's relatives. In fact, in this particular sequence, Sicily is no specific place or codified landscape, but simply the black clothing of the women solemnly intent on ridding themselves of this revengeful sex-crazed woman (the bottana or trollop). On the contrary, Scotland reveals itself to the eyes of the spectator in the choral image of the station teeming with people and, immediately after, in the architectural contours of a northern city, where the rhetorical clamour of the Sicilians, their ancestry, their destiny, the Latino mentality of the offender, automatically give way to people clad in colourful clothes, joyfully bustling around. The tailored landscape – similar to a Nativity scene – of Trinacria, where the stones and houses fire furious impulses, fades into insignificance before the dynamic metropolitan setting in which, however, Southern Italian associations continue to thrive, even in such a context of modernity. The ‘Capri’ restaurant is a prime example of the presence of Southern Italy in the cosmopolitan Anglo-Saxon context in the late 1960s, which sees the triumph of the democratic outlook of the citizen repulsed by war and violence, who mourns the victims of workplace accidents (imagine if they have any sympathy for Mafia-style murders!), supports public hygiene and environmental initiatives, sympathises with convicted criminals and opposes capital punishment. In a nutshell, we are dealing with a type of person in total contrast to the madwoman from Sicily who has come to shoot the traitor in the head before returning to the homeland. The ‘Capri’ restaurant is a happy haven, adorned with fishing nets and packed with Southern Italian reminiscences, at times blatantly exhibited, such as the red and white chequered tablecloths, traditional folk songs hummed by waiters wearing brightly coloured neckties and blue and white sailor sweatrs. They are variants of a decidedly stereotyped Italy, highlighted by the identikit of Assunta, so ‘alternative’ and so inconsistent with respect to the identity of the Scottish and English citizens as to give rise to misunderstandings and mockeries. Consider, for example, when Assunta – employed by the McIntosh family – sees for the first time a man wearing a kilt and splits her sides laughing. The traditional geographical connotation linked to the garment once more prompts a conventional cultural response, a stock situation that Assunta – steeped in the traditional customs of her native region – fails to recognise and consequently mistakes for a tell-tale sign of some sort of ‘defect’ in the sexual orientation of the guest who turned up wearing a kilt.

More than ever set on accomplishing her mission, Assunta ends up in Sheffield, which is initially depicted on the screen as a sheep-rearing area, and subsequently as an industrial city teeming with factories and electric power stations. This is when something totally unheard of takes place; as the girl becomes more and more removed from her native archaic land, she becomes exposed to further cultural shocks by John, a Scottish amateur rugby player and mechanic, who agrees to help her trace Macaluso. With this intent, he takes her to a dance hall, where they meet a local girl who is extremely susceptible to the charm of the Latin lover, to the extent that, when questioned, she confirms that she is acquainted with Vincenzo. On hearing this, the Sicilian girl is convinced that, in practice, morality is what counts. And certainly not that of a Scottish bottana (trollop) with an insatiable appetite for Latin virility; that same virility that Assunta attributes to Macaluso when, offended by a youth who attempts to play with her braid, she orders John to avenge the disgrace in the manner of Southern Italian men, well versed in the art of taking justice with the knife. The episode in the dance hall stands out for the dynamism of the setting, all the more if viewed in contrast to the persistent anaphoric reference to the grim sequences filmed in Sicily which, in an overflow of fantasy, cyclically surface in Assunta's imagination during her journey. Mary Wood is of the opinion that, in Italian cinema, contemporary urban space often transgresses its confines to infiltrate into the narrative context of the rural world, with the result that the events occurring in both dimensions become intertwined (Wood, 2005: 198). In La ragazza con la pistola this is made possible above all by the fact that the respective spaces are placed in close contact through flashbacks and dream-like sequences. In the Sicilian scenes that haunt Assunta's imagination during her overseas experience, she sees herself clad in a long, baggy black dress, as she is intent on shooting at Vincenzo, while the local inhabitants hurl abuse at her, calling her a ‘shameless trollop’ (‘svergognata’ and ‘bottana’). This obsessive scene, staged over and over again by the enraged girl, at the root of the analogical editing that splits the narrative diegesis into the twin Anglo-Sicilian setting, reminds us that tradition is synonymous with obligations, because – in Assunta's opinion – ‘the true man must show, and the true woman must defend herself’. This quotation directs us towards the scene in which John is seated on the sofa with the protagonist, the evening before his rugby match in Bath. As a fan of John, Assunta intends to take part in the event. This is by no means a trivial detail, because it opens a window on the premonitory signs of the woman's nascent change of identity, as she gradually becomes more tuned to Anglo-Saxon customs, while being still incapable of harnessing her passionate instincts. During the match in Bath, this new-born ‘English’ sports fan is, however, still a prisoner of the Sicilian way of thinking: she yells ‘stab the bastard!’, while she roots for John in the stands, wielding her infernal rotating gadget.

During her stay in Bath, modernity gradually smooths the rough edges off the Sicilian young woman. Indeed, Assunta appears more and more emancipated, also thanks to the contribution of Dr Osborne, who helps her to appreciate the importance of her emancipation, in opposition to the obtuseness of Southern Italian traditions. Further on in the film, we see that a concrete sign of the purifying action of this metamorphosis is given by the decor of her flat in London which comprises, among other things, various drawings, including a few representing Japanese art. The polychromatic, polyphonic, polymorphic style – in a word, the multi-line lyricism – of the Sicilian girl in London decrees her transformation into a modern woman restored to the Western World, who has permanently renounced the castrating anguish entrapped in the black dress and archaic braid, to embrace with tentative curiosity the multicultural paradigms of the contemporary world. ² At this stage in the film, we no longer see what is narrated in Sicily (not even in the protagonist's recurring imagination) and her exploits will, from now on, be linked to the historical present and to the action. It is Assunta herself who claims the right to become immersed in the present-day world, by taking part in a local demonstration for peace in Vietnam, with the result that the cultural environment in London – which reflects the momentous changes taking place during the shooting of the film – becomes imbued with a symbolic value. Indeed, we are perfectly aware of the fact that the conflict in Vietnam, which broke out around 1955 and ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon, was a prerogative of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, who supported respectively the South and North of that ill-fated nation. Moreover, it can be considered that the conflict between these two Superpowers, in the heart of the Asian nation, will lead Assunta to recognition. In fact, when Dr Osborne spots her amidst the demonstrators and asks her what she has to do with the issue of peace, Assunta promptly retorts: ‘I’m through with violence!’, as if to inform him that the hatchet has now been buried and that, at this point, the only possible battle is for reconciliation, whether urged by historical circumstances (the war in Vietnam), or prompted by the personal contrast between the protagonist's world of origin (Sicily) and that of her rebirth (England). History has become introspective analysis. Assunta's war fever has risen in her twin souls: on the one hand, her inclination towards humanitarianism and democracy and, on the other hand, her anarchist and trade unionist spirit. She writes on a placard the insignia of her change of attitude. Solely through action and protest is she able to communicate the true essence of her personal destiny, that of a pacifist determined to extinguish within herself the conflict that precludes otherness and every possible road to growth.

At the end of the film, the protagonist rushes to Brighton with the intention of boarding a ferry to Jersey, in order to meet up again with Dr Osborne. However, due to the rough sea, she is forced to spend the night in a hotel, until the waves die down and the boat can depart. The room she sleeps in is lavishly furnished with red carpets, stylish curtains and luxurious sofas, and is substantially in keeping with the newfound identity of Assunta, who has now discarded her former warlike Sicilian code of conduct to address the priorities of an emancipated woman, with all her self-assured intelligence and clownish howlers. If the opening scene of the film portrays the desolate alleys of an arid Sicilian village, the curtain closes in a famous English seaside resort, marked by well-being and gratification. If, at one time, the woman was prey to the monolith of tradition, she is now a free-thinking stateswoman cultivating lifelong projects with freedom from poverty. ‘Struggle’ is no longer tantamount to ‘aggression’, but to good politics. Assunta is no longer escorted by her mother and cousin to the pharmacy, but marches confidently towards Brighton, light-hearted and as free as a windsock.

Glottological perspectives

In the brief overview of the scenes portraying the geographical disparity in La ragazza con la pistola and of the reshuffling of identity on the part of the protagonist, it becomes evident that it is language – whether dialect or standard – that traces her path. In this connection, it must also be said that bottana constitutes a genuine focal point from the semantic point of view, a key definition. The reason is that, because we are dealing with an emblematic dialect term that summarises Assunta's story, it recaptures the significance of the watertight mentality of the Sicilians – forever loyal to the socio-ethical rules and regulations of a traditional archaic society – whereby ownership and authority lie exclusively in the hands of the male sex. A genuine phallocentric comédie humaine, we might say, whose characteristics have been illustrated by Jacqueline Reich. In the previously mentioned book on the Latin lover, Reich observes that in Sicily, if the male members of the family are incapable of safeguarding the virginity of their young women, the latter become immediately branded as ‘puttane’ (Reich, 2004: 53). In Monicelli's film, bottana is a conceptual image that is first of all pinned on Assunta, now fallen into disgrace after having had sexual intercourse with Vincenzo, and subsequently to the women slandered by her for having indiscriminately slipped into the slough of guilt. Now, if we transpose on an emotional level the history, geography and material and spiritual life of the typical Sicilian woman, a martyr to masculine libido, the term bottana as a regional variant of the standard Italian term puttana takes on a comical and parodistic aspect. It is no coincidence that, in the economy of the film, Vincenzo is the first to use this term and is the last to pronounce it at the close of the film when Assunta – who now has the upper hand and is in full command of her own future – takes her distance from him as she boards the ferry for Jersey. ‘Bottana eri e bottana sei rimasta’ (‘Once a trollop, always a trollop’) is the fulmen in clausula that is proof of the author's intention to link the epilogue of the film to its onset in his portrayal of Vincenzo's obtuse fanaticism, as he goes to extremes, even after his idols have been shattered, his laws disintegrated and his values perverted. And this happens because, whereas at the opening of the full-length film violence against women was man's prime right, this prerogative has now been denied him and marks the downfall of virility, to the extent that the dishonoured woman – armed with a magazine, a cigarette and a disrespectful attitude – subverts her initial condition, thus rendering the male sex more ridiculous than evil. ³

It is more than evident that the use of the Sicilian dialect spoken by the characters in the opening scenes set in Trinacria not only contributes to representing the truth, but also helps to weave the plot of the comedy itself. In the film, the typical regional forms, such as the demonstrative chista as opposed to questa, the tonic object pronoun a’mmia instead of a me, as well as the typical utterances of the spoken language with the verb placed at the end of the sentence, create comical forms that entertain the Italian spectator who has no familiarity with the Sicilian vowel and consonant system, or with its linguistic usage. As she gains familiarity with her new environment, Assunta resorts more and more often to the use of standard Italian, which in the film is also spoken by several foreign characters, such as Mrs McIntosh and Dr Osborne. This is an essential requisite of the process of purification, if indeed Assunta is to progressively uproot the typically Sicilian features that are still evident in her character and conform to the way of thinking of her new country. The switching of the Italian and English languages in the film helps Assunta in the initial phase of her journey, exhausted as she is by her herculean efforts to communicate; in addition, it also helps the spectator find their way through the more typically intercultural sequences. However, the more the implacable investigator in her loses ground, the higher Assunta flies, intermingling language, culture and new interests. At this point, nothing will hold her back and she is no longer the same person, as can be seen in the scene where she is attending English classes: there is no resemblance between the person she is now and the person she was before. Indeed, she is now an infallible observer of British customs and traditions, which have changed her both internally and externally – as regards her dress, appearance and language – thus transforming her into a perfect middle-class member of the trendy late 1960s. It is easy to see how Assunta's clothes and hairstyle unearth new semiotic pathways which reflect the signs of her rebirth. In his article on ‘Fantasy female liberation in 1960s crime comedy film’, Robert von Dassanowsky holds that, in the films produced in the 1960s, women used their way of dressing as a means of communication, both in a patriarchal and antipatriarchal direction (Von Dassanowsky, 2008: 110). In the whole of the first part of La ragazza con la pistola, the black dress and braid – traditionally imposed and monitored by fathers and husbands – hold together an ethnic mosaic which, in the cultural conflict between the South and North of Italy modulated on the overseas journey of the protagonist, acts as a geopolitical map that nurtures conflicts. These conflicts, as previously stated, will be resolved in Assunta, now radically transformed ab imis after a personal and intercultural battle ended in glory, in the final punchline. The purchase of a car has enabled her to experience moments of triumphal joy, in full freedom, after months of anguish spent in the obsession of her abuse. Let us consider the dance at the opening of the film, with men and women in strictly separate spaces. This is confirmation of the hierarchical structure, and upholds values the results of which can be seen in the inhibition of a girl compelled to dance with her cousin in a heavily guarded room, behind a window with half-closed shutters and drawn curtains. We see nothing of the sort in the sequence filmed in the dance hall in Sheffield, where the dancing takes place in perfect harmony with the conventions of a free heterogeneous society that will eventually lead the protagonist towards escape and transgression. In this particular episode, Assunta's unstable temperament and capricious mood swings are no longer predominant in the dualism between her and the external world, once she has decided to make the change and has indulged in a final dance with Vincenzo, body to body, just like in the abandoned farmhouse, when the man's brutal strength deflowered the innocent girl's honour. Having conceded her abuser a last dance, Assunta is intent on devising new tactics, now that she has acquired a respectable reputation. Now that all the romantic stories and wedding plans have been permanently put aside, a new transitory relationship matures to overturn the plans. She is cold and collected, whereas he is hot-headed. Having taken stock of all past events, the female decapitates the male who has misjudged all expectations; she devastates his phallic shrine, deflates the Casanova's humiliating persistence, jeers at his patriotism, massacres his hunting instinct and then boards the ferry to Jersey. What more could you expect from a bottana …?

Dames, dandies, cavaliers: Gender binarism and more

Assunta's transformation is a poetic metaphor. And the exuberance that leads her to transgress is also somewhat poetic, however comical it may appear. Her actions reveal the disparity engendered by her humiliation, a laceration interpreted with a hint of irony that will incite the protagonist to free herself of the primordial dogmas of a society to which she no longer relates, despite the fact that, throughout the film, her origins have the same effect on her as that of the sirens on Ulysses. Yet the shame she experiences in the face of her fellow villagers does not lead her astray or plunge her into a state of bewilderment. On the contrary, in full awareness of her dishonour, she determines to gain personal revenge, in violation of the Sicilian code of behaviour, according to which it is only the male members of the family – or, as a last resort, the fiancé – who are supposed to avenge the abuse. However, as we know, the Patanè family does not include either a father or brothers and, what is more, Salvatore has no intention of intervening in the matter. Thus the infringement of the cultural code is doubly staged by Assunta when, at the beginning of the film, she becomes fired with a desire to activate what is motionless (the impossibility of a settling of scores on the part of the male members of the family) and, at the end of the story, she takes her revenge on her accuser, by confronting him with her personal emancipation.

In the previously mentioned article by Robert von Dassanowsky, the author considers that female dominion, occasionally of a violent nature, tends towards a liberation that infringes present events and escalates into criminality (Von Dassanowsky, 2008: 111). This opinion is partially confirmed in Monicelli's film when Assunta, wielding a gun, is determined to seal her personal redemption by killing the man who has outraged her. Vincenzo's death would therefore be perfectly legal, an exalting epilogue to ward off Assunta's condemnation on the part of her society of origin; in reality, she will not accomplish her bloodthirsty mission because, in the meanwhile, her personal universe has come alive and the pathos, now outdated, has been reduced to ashes. The genuine harmony she has attained is something unquestionable and her revenge has fully compensated the tragic event she had originally premeditated.

Reflecting on female identity, in her Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television, Deidre Pribram affirms that female culture, defined in parallel or in correspondence with male culture, does not serve the interests of the fairer sex. Similarly, a definition based on the binary criteria of sexual differentiation would pin us to a simplistic comparison between male and female. Women – Pribram writes – should be interpreted in the light of their intrinsic heterogeneity (Pribram, 1988: 10). In the film, such an intuition would seem plausible in Assunta's meetings with several women in Britain, in particular with Dr Osborne's wife, who instils in her the seeds of a physical and psychological transformation. In fact, she is the person who not only teaches Assunta elegance and appropriate behaviour, but also trains her to adopt the hallmarks of the typical intellectual and attractive woman who renews her wardrobe and learns English in order to gain full immersion into the society that hosts her. Assunta's identity, therefore, is to be interpreted in the light of her continual interaction with the other women who, in their various ways, help to make her more independent, with even a hint of vanity. The process of metamorphosis undertaken by the protagonist, who emulates her female interlocutors in order to open her mind towards new horizons, is an alternation of transmission and reflux; in other words, it reproduces the oscillations of an interchange that can also be extended to her female relatives back in Sicily who, in the scene of the pursuit, do their utmost to prevent Assunta from being abducted. One of the neighbours, in the attempt to hinder the abductors, even picks up the sewing machine and throws it out of the window! This is a gesture that crystallises the essential sisterhood among women that in La ragazza con la pistola consists in a centuries-old complicity, precisely because it is unpremeditated and incontrovertible.

The film space is shared in equal proportions with masculine identity, seen in the typically comical and diverse figures of Vincenzo, John, Frank and Dr Osborne. Macaluso's traditionalist attitude towards women is the pivot on which Assunta's emotional sphere hinges throughout the first part of the film. To begin with, the self-centred obsession that leads Vincenzo to be a hardened womaniser is explained by the fact that for him a woman, while being at the same time alert and chatty, is biologically inferior, something just to pass the time, hardly more than an object. As stated by Jacqueline Reich, he ‘engages the myth of sexual potency and prowess as the prime indicator of Sicilian virility’ (Reich, 2004: 50), so that – I might add – the conflict between male and female identity is a contest of torso and haunches, as in a primitive Titanomachy. An example of this is when the abductors take Assunta to Vincenzo and he eyes her from head to foot, as if to size her up. In the ensuing conversation, Assunta's cousin Concetta is defined as ‘la chiatta’ (the barge), as if he were referring to something inanimate. However, the antithesis generated between male and female in this antagonistic mechanism on the diegetic plane engenders creative scenarios linked – needless to say – to the patriarchal system of Ancient Sicily upon which we reflected before. Once and for all, let us consider the example of the night in Brighton when, in total unawareness of the unforeseeable actions of the protagonist, Vincenzo reminds her of the first night spent in the farmhouse, with the intent of claiming rights on her according to Sicilian law. Following their return to the hotel, the events that took place in the farmhouse are revived by analogy, but this time the love declaration of the man – who avows his intention to marry Assunta – clashes with the insincere zeal of the girl as she feigns ritualistic logics: the detail of the gun aimed at his belly (in Sicily, it would correspond to a knife), her lack of involvement displayed in the moment of intimacy (‘fredda come marmo sono’, ‘cold as marble I am’), the action of letting the gun fall to the ground and the closing formula ‘allora sì, arrovinami’ (‘go ahead then, finish me off’). Among the conditions he imposes for the marriage, he claims the right to have the woman all to himself, a woman willing to return to the homeland and permanently renounce her independence. Vincenzo demands all these things to ensure that the spirit he incarnates will remain in charge of the codes, culture and ceremonial rites of the Sicily of his forefathers, held in the highest regard through the sacrosanct, indisputable dogmas indoctrinated in the male.

The meeting with John in Sheffield has a touch of Italian flavour, because the young man – who is a good-looking Scottish mechanic – is wearing a pair of fashionable white shoes and Assunta immediately notices that they are of Italian manufacture. She has a keen eye for detail. When questioned, John answers her in excellent Italian and offers to help her trace Vincenzo. He is amiable and open-minded, yet he still does crazy things. To begin with, he picks her up in the car and takes her for a ride at top speed, before accompanying her to a dance hall notoriously frequented by Italians. John will prove to be a fantastic friend to the protagonist; he has charisma, makes himself popular with everyone, is a sportsman and behind his blond quiff lies a Hercules: in short, he has both the guts and the balls. Though susceptible to Assunta's charm, he is careful not to repeat either Vincenzo's perverse behaviour or the absurd advances of the Apulian waiter in the ‘Capri’ restaurant. Contrary to these Latin lovers, John never degenerates into lewdness or violence even when, during the return journey home, he brings up the issue of sex as he invites Assunta to his flat and – if she so desires – to sleep with him. On hearing these words, the girl reacts as if someone has thrown a pie in her face and insists on sleeping in the young man's one-bedroom flat and sending him off to sleep in a hotel. Determined to calm her down, the man invites her to stay in the flat and promises not to touch her. John exhibits the same diplomatic nonchalance even when, as they are seated on the sofa watching a rugby match on TV, owing to a misunderstanding of a sexual nature, an argument breaks out, during which Assunta distinguishes herself for her quick-handedness and the young man, out of precaution and spirit of reconciliation, closes himself in his room, in an attempt to defuse the situation. A similar situation will occur later on at Frank's house, when Assunta, led towards the bed, wields a fireplace tong and threatens him with it.

Frank is the ‘suicide for love’ character to whom Assunta donates a litre of blood. In the general structure of the film, he is a character invested with an ethical mission: that of instilling in the protagonist a more broad-minded ideological outlook and a wider intellectual scope, in line with the general British population of the 1960s and 1970s; a period of time marked by continuous social initiatives in favour of women's rights and those of the minority groups. By no coincidence, Frank is gay and is one of the few men sensitive to female attraction. The love he declares to Assunta, when he asks her to marry him, after having broken up with his former male partner, is essentially to be seen as a principle of harmony and fellowship with women. ⁴ In Assunta, Frank detects virile and magnanimous qualities, a determination as exhilarating as desire. In this perspective, the young man preserves a hint of purity and an equally powerful element of barbaric Sicilian pathos. In the face of such admiration, Assunta almost automatically reclaims female weakness, a parrot-like moral distortion or formula, convinced in part that power is the sole prerogative of the male sex (‘Ma che stai dicendo? Io femmina sono. Debole. Sono una donna’, ‘What do you mean? I’m a woman. I’m weak. I’m a woman’). Frank's homosexuality is an unexpected catharsis for the protagonist, and yet it contributes to educating her beyond all expectations. With their principles of equilibrium and respect, John and Frank act as correcting coefficients because they transcend the ethical weightiness of the Latin male embodied in Macaluso and have the function of a therapeutic cudgel to pierce an impenetrable skull.

In the light of this, we can affirm that these characters are invested with an identical structural function – that of steering the diegetic plot towards the happy ending – as well as with a precise symbolic mediation: that of cultivating in the protagonist the regenerative seed that will enable her engagement to Dr Osborne. He is perhaps the most charismatic figure in the entire cast, because he neutralises, in Assunta's conscience, the ghosts of the patronising trade of passions rooted in the archetypal Sicilian male. This is a gradual process that is developed in the second part of the film when he encourages her to cultivate emancipation. Having been involved in a series of paradoxical situations, Assunta falls in love with Dr Osborne, initially on a platonic level and subsequently with total commitment, seeing in him a new and better future, once her love for Vincenzo ceases to be a vampirising experience and her love for Dr Osborne becomes a phenomenal golem to relate to. Having acquired full awareness of her own paradoxes and contradictions, Assunta escapes from the abysmal immobility to which she would have been condemned had she returned to Sicily. At this point, the only possible island for her is Jersey, where her lover is awaiting her to close with a happy ending the human comedy staged by Monicelli in his 25th full-length film.