The Good Soldier (1982 film)
The Good Soldier is a 1982 Italian-French romantic drama film co-written and directed by Franco Brusati. It premiered at the 39th edition of the Venice Film Festival.
Cast
- Mariangela Melato as Marta
- Gérard Darier as Tommaso
- Giampaolo De Angelis as Tommasino
- Bruno Zanin as Marco
- Carla Bizzarri as Aunt Adele
- Toni Barpi as Uncle Pietro
- Jean-François Balmer as the Lawyer
- Gérard Lartigau as Luca
- Siria Betti as Marta's Mother
- Carlo Monni as Giovanotto Torretta
- Clara Colosimo as Friend
- Diana Dei as Friend
Production
Brusati drew inspiration for the script from a true story that occurred in Livorno.Release
The film had its world premiere at the 39th Venice International Film Festival, in the main competition section. Following its mixed reception, Brusati assembled a new, shorter cut of the film, which was released in Italian cinemas in February 1983.Reception
Corriere della Sera's film critic noted that while the Venice cut was marred by "the continuous oscillation between realism and surrealism where images and voices were often way over-the-top", the new theatrical version "by cutting out some of the unpleasantness and giving the whole more compactness, remedies to a good extent the failures of the screenplay".Paolo Mereghetti noted that even with the new cut the film remains "indefensible", characterized by "subtle conformism", "over-the-top grotesqueness", and a "discordant poetic tone".