Love Without Love

Bell' Antonio (Levine; Embassy), directed by Italy's Mauro Bolognini, is a serious and discreet discussion of a case of impotence. The hero (Marcello Mastroianni) lusts only for women he cannot love; the woman he loves (Claudia Cardinale) he imagines an "angel," and he cannot imagine muddying her wings with animality. When she wins an annulment he is desolate, and his family is disgraced --in Sicily, where the family lives, a man's virility and his public position are intimately interdependent. In despair, the young man turns to a servant girl, gets her with child. The honor of the family is thus ironically redeemed. Mastroianni's mother shouts the good news from the housetops, the neighbors come from all sides to offer congratulations. "Now you can have a home and family," burbles his best friend. "Now you can be like everybody else." Mastroianni smiles vacantly. To a grown man, what is sex without love?

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