Toth Database - Cinema

Beauty of Lodi

The film tells the tormented love story between Roberta, a rich and comely young woman of the Lombard bourgeoisie (played by Stefania Sandrelli), Franco Garbagna, a mechanic of the Automobile Club of Italy employed at a Supercortemaggiore service station on the Autostrada del Sole is passionate about go-kart racing. Meeting occasionally on a beach near Marina di Pietrasanta on a summer afternoon, the two embark on a relationship that takes them to various locations in northern Italy. The young Roberta comes to live for some time in a highway motel in order to stay close to her lover in the (vain) attempt to shape him and thus introduce him into the bourgeois world of entrepreneurship and make him a commercial manager in the automotive sector (symbolized in the film by the numerous decapottable darting and vehicles generally filmed in numerous outdoor sequences).

Beauty of Lodi

Language: English

Year: 1963

Country of Production: Italy

Duration: 80 Minutes

Color: Black and White

Genre: Italian comedy

Directed : Mario Missiroli

Screenplay: Mario Missiroli – Alberto Abasino

Producer: Alfredo Bini

Production Company: Arco Film

Distribution: Cineriz

Photograph: Tonino delli Colli

Editing by Nino Bargli

Music: Piero Umiliani

Set design: Danilo Donati

Costumes: Danilo Donati

Makeup: Maria Teresa Corridoni, Goffredo Rocchetti

Performers and characters

Roberta : Stefania Sandrelli

Franco Garbagnati : Àngel Aranda

Roberta's grandmother: Elena Borgo

Annamaria : Maria Monti

Roberta's grandfather: Cesare di Montagnano

Criticism 

Morandini reviews the love story between a rich agrarian of Lodignano and a line of Cremonese mechanics:

" First he takes him to bed, then sends him to prison for theft and finally marries him, ready to invest in the industrial branch."

Entrusted to a nervously shattered script and a picked-up montage, it pulls the target on the provisional, brash and efficient Italy of the economic boom, but rarely hits it.

He lacks the pregnant images, the final scenes and the dazzling moments. 

Bravina la Sandrelli. »