Scent of a Woman

A blind captain named Fausto sets out from Turin to Naples with the young conscript assigned as his orderly. Along the way he harasses women, humiliates the boy and picks fights with everyone. The real reason for the journey becomes clear at the end of the road, and it is not a holiday. The film refuses to make blindness pitiable. Fausto's poisonous good humour is built as a defence, and the story sets against him the one person who believes none of his act, the young soldier. What grows between them is never named as friendship. Dino Risi directed, from Giovanni Arpino's 1969 novel Il buio e il miele. Vittorio Gassman plays Fausto, Alessandro Momo the conscript. Two facts fell across the film afterwards: Momo died in a motorcycle accident a few weeks after shooting ended, and Gassman took the best actor prize at Cannes in 1975. It was nominated at the 1976 Academy Awards for foreign film and adapted screenplay. The 1992 Al Pacino picture is a remake of this one. Who it is for: anyone who likes the harsh wing of Italian comedy, and Gassman. Who it is not for: anyone unable to file the character's treatment of women under period behaviour. The film does not criticise it; it uses it as material.