User reviews

In 1943, in Naples, Germans have just left the city when the Americans arrive, commanded by Gen. Mark Clark (Burt Lancaster), having the Italian Captain Curzio Malaparte (Marcello Mastroianni) as the liaison. The population is starving, with women and children prostituting themselves for food. Principessa Consuelo Caracciolo (Claudia Cardinale) is a noble Italian friend of Malaparte, and seems to be very adapted to all situations. Private Jimmy Wren (Ken Marshall) is the support of Captain Malaparte, and falls in love with a local girl. Honorific Colonel Deborah Wyatt (Alexandra King), an arrogant pilot and wife of an American Senator, comes to Naples to be promoted and get votes for her husband and the American president. Malaparte is assigned to show her the situation of the city. This movie is very strange, bizarre and violent. But although paradoxical, it is also fascinating. It shows a defeated people, needing to sell sons and daughters to survive. The last scene, when a tank passes over a local and Jimmy comes to apologize to Malaparte is fantastic. It shows the relation between winners and losers in a war. The cast has Burt Lancaster, Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale, among others good actors and actresses. I like very much the work of Liliana Caviani, but this film certainly is not indicated for all audiences. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): `A Pele' (`The Skin')

As a member of the US Air Force stationed in Naples during the movie I had the opportunity to appear in the film. I think I had 26 appearances in the film, all as a non-speaking extra. I got to know some of the actors, Ken Marshall was a really decent guy, Burt Lancaster (had a photo with him) always took 2 or 3 takes to get it right, Marcello Mastroiani was amazing, he spoke his lines like he was telling a story over dinner, just flawless! Claudia Cardinale was really nice the couple times we talked. It was really an adventure doing the film, there were many hours of just sitting around waiting for something to happen. Months later when the film was released they had two showings at the NATO base. It was a sell out both times and all you could here was everyone (along with me) saying things like: "Hey there I am, That was me, Look look, there I am again"! Someday I would like to see it again so I could hear what it was about. One last thing, the most memorable part of the film for me was when the American tanks (Korean war vintage) went through the town and the Italians all came out and cheered. That scene had to be done twice and then spliced together. Once the director yelled (in Italian) "cut", Bert stood up in his jeep, with his hands on his hips, looked at a now silent cast and proclaimed in his strong voice "In my 35 years of movie making, this is the most f***ed up fiasco I have ever been involved in"! Maybe that made it in the directors cut!

I'd like to say that all these comments against this movie are inaccurate. La Pelle is a great movie. Hollywood would never make a movie like this. This movie has nothing to do with `Pearl Harbor'. La Pelle is a work of art, this is not another US war propaganda designed for a public brain wash. This movie is realistic, funny and sad at the same time. The story is very cleaver, intelligent. Perhaps, Americans don't like it because this movie depicts the US army involved in prostitution and in a certain disregard for the Italian people. Anyway, it's the best war movie I've ever watched in my life. There is no lies like in `Rambo', there is no hate like in `Platoon' (in which is good movie too). I recommend , I would say that it's excellent.

My father was in this film as the "Veterinarian" and therefore I was able to be on the set for a couple of the scene's being filmed. This was a great experience and being up close to the filming, the director and the cast was really a fantastic opportunity and then to see the film when it was released in an Italian movie theater as a finished product was a real treat.

Over the years I have had contact with a few of the American's that were cast for "La Pele" (most of them as extra's). Many of the American's were from the NATO base in Naples, Italy and were friends with or knew my father.

This may not have been the greatest war film ever made but the experience that I had was great and will always be remembered.

Mike Cohen / mikesc99@hotmail.com

I have more or less the same feelings toward The Skin as I do towards Liliana Cavani's more well-known The Night Porter. Both movies deal with provocative and uncomfortable sexual themes/situations taking place during World War II. Both are daring and sound fascinating on paper. Both are also weirdly boring, making me feel as though Cavani is a filmmaker who's admirably daring and willing to go to places most other directors won't go, but at the same time, can't really tell a story or make things properly involving.

Much of what The Skin and The Night Porter explores is thought-provoking and boundary-pushing. These are difficult stories that I'm glad have been told, but I just wish they were told better. I was shocked by how boring The Night Porter was, and I'm similarly surprised/disappointed by how dull and poorly paced The Skin was.

I also didn't like how the whole thing was in Italian, even though many scenes involve characters who don't speak the same language interacting and needing translators. It's very odd and distracting to have to remind yourself "I hear Italian right now, but in the film's universe, this character is actually speaking English at the moment, and so the actual Italian characters can't understand him/her."

The Skin succeeds in being thought-provoking and disturbing, but fails elsewhere, as a movie. And it's not that I think it should be "entertaining" in the traditional sense, given the subject matter. I just think it should be more involving and engrossing on a gut level. I can honestly understand why this one wallows in obscurity, despite some things here that are certainly able to be appreciated.

This movie is based on the true memoirs of the main character (Curzio Malaparte) during his time when he acted as diplomatic liaison between the Allied forces and the Italian in the newly occupied Italy. The book is a collection of short stories depicting the collapse of the Italian society under Allied occupation. There is no story line between those short stories. The movie puts them in chronological order, but the reigning chaos and lack of moral message (the message is exactly the lack of morality) can confuse the spectator.

This is a very original war movie, in that the main theme is the not the war front. The Allied are not viewed from their own perspective, which is one of true liberators. Instead, the movie shows the Italian people courting the Allies as liberators in order to escape from starvation. The Allies themselves are caught in a trap where they know the Italian hospitality isn't sincere, but are unable to understand why. They don't realize that before them, the Germans were courted as liberators too, and that in this context of food shortage and general poverty, the only way the Italians have to secure their survival is to play that game.

Malaparte (played by Marcello Mastroiani) acts then as a translator, helping the Americans as a guide would help a tourist, by explaining in each situation why people are acting in this seemingly dishonorable way.

La Pelle (The Skin) would make more sense if compared to Malaparte's twin book on the occupied Europe (Kaputt, or Broken to Pieces). In the latter, he portrays the Nazi way of oppressing through violence. In La Pelle, he shows how the Americans achieve a similar result through economic means, while refusing any responsibility. In Kaputt, Jewish women are made prostitutes by the German Army to escape death by the bullet; in La Pelle, Italian women become prostitutes for the American Army to escape death by starvation.

This movie tells an historic story, and begins with a somewhat arty slant. But it gradually becomes a dadaist study in human depravity and thinly veiled injustice in terrible times. Though set in WWII, it is not a war movie. It probes deeply and uncomfortably into moral issues rarely discussed in war movies. For this reason it is extremely compelling.

The plot line is not direct, and the characters often confusing, but that is it's goal to be a moving piece of cinematic art. The film develops into a Felliniesque dream where logic and a pleasant, easy, normal straightforward narrative dissolve into a a gaudy abstract symbolism that will require a second viewing to figure out. This film is on the level of Bergman, Fellini, Godard etc. It is a challenging, heartfelt film, not suitable for date night. The direction, camera, acting, editing, sets, wardrobe, casting, are excellent.

I watched this in 2020-- 12 years after it was released on the Criterion Channel. Never had heard of it, but the description sounded interesting. Interesting, the language is Italian with English subtitles, even though many of the characters are American (including Burt Lancaster) who was ironically typecast as the dithering, bullying American general (referring to Buck Turgidson in DR STRANGELOVE).

I couldn't find any professional reviews of this film, or any box office history, so, because of its ambivalent anti-war/anti-Americanism it may never have played theatrically in the US. The Criterion Channel may be the only place you'll find it. But if you love cinema, you'll love this film.

I still remember the impact of Curzio Malaparte's novels Kaputt (1944) and La Pelle = The Skin (1949) when released in Spanish translation in Buenos Aires in the early fifties. Even if translations were hasty and incomplete, both books, especially The Skin became instant best sellers, in spite of (or because) their condemnation by the Catholic Church.

The Skin begins in 1943, with Italy freshly exited from the Axis Powers and Allied forces consolidating their control of the devastated, bombed out and utterly impoverished city of Naples; there is no food outside the black market, no gainful employment except prostitution, extortion and theft and people die daily of malnutrition or of curable diseases without medical aid. Although not at the top of the literary heap, The Skin had enduring success and became something of a legend, perhaps because it showed the American occupying army in a vastly different (and probably more realistic) light than Life and Selections of the Reader's Digest.

If noting else, The Skin is a book difficult to forget once read. It influenced many writers, among them Joseph Heller in Catch-22 (1961). Conversely, this movie, released in 1981 brings frequently to mind the 1970 Catch-22 movie.

I did not particularly like the movie. It is too long, it puts episode after episode on screen without special relief and seems to take pride in the atrocious and the gory for no reason I can see except to cement Cavani's reputation as a shocking director earned in The Night Porter (1974). Some characters (like General Clark or Mrs. Wyatt) are made of clichés. Fine actors (Mastroianni, Lancaster, Cardinale) are around but only the first is used to the measure of his skills.

As to the copy I streamed, obviously one would expect Americans and Italians speak their own language among them but my device offered only one option: all Italian, subtitled. One misses Lancaster's real voice.

One of my all-time favorite war films. Americans might have trouble with it as it doesn't show us in the best possible light, but it is probably very close to the truth. It demonstrates better than any film I've seen how terrible and dispiriting life can be for a defeated population. Marcello Mastroianni gives another of his trademark world-weary but compassionate performances as the liaison between the American and Italian armies.

This movie, which is situated in Italy in 1944, when the Nazis were being driven out by the American army, drew a lot of attention in Italy when it came out in 1980. I watched it in an Italian cinema the year after its release and did not like it.

In my opinion, the director tried to draw a large audience by producing a movie wíth a maximum of shocking scenes, hoping that it would be discussed a lot (which was the case). The movie perspires, however, such a negative atmosphere, that even the presence of such famous actors like Marcello Mastroiani and Claudia Cardinale could not save it.

That a war movie presents some shocking scenes is quite natural. But in « La Pelle » they are not balanced by any scenes transpiring humanity and positive sentiments.

That a movie about the same period can be an enjoyment to watch, is shown, for example, by « La Notte di San Lorenzo » by the brothers Taviani, a film I can warmly recommend. I would not recommend « La Pelle » to anyone.

Maybe , two virtues : the cast and the realism about American presence in Italy after war. Shocking, a mix of Fellini and Catch 22, seductive for beautiful work of Marcello Mastrianni and for captivity of Burt Lancaster in a cage of cliches, it is adaptation of the novel of Curzio Malaparte, offering, in same measure, more than the word of book.

Maybe, today, more convincing about reactions, cliches and ways of survive in crisis time.

Exactly this cruel exploration of truth is its real virtue.

In short, a honest perspective about prejudices and tough lessons, about people behavior and their gestures.

Not story, only a chain of episotes. At final- a spoon of bitterness.

I enjoyed the movie but I am a bit biased since I had a bit part in it. I was in the US Army and serving in Naples when Cavani came looking for extras.

The books is pretty good, so if you read that you will appreciate the movie even less because quite frankly, although it tries to follow parts of the book, it doesn't do a good job. I agree with another writer who said that it was pretty disjointed. I felt that. It seemed to jump from one scene to another and often there was no order to them. Also, I don't remember Alexandra King's part in the book - a US pilot with a US senator husband. That was pretty ridiculous! The best thing about the movie, I feel, was the soundtrack.

By all means see the movie if you have a couple of hours (or whatever the running time is) to kill or if, like me, you were an extra.

(PS - if anybody can find a copy of the movie for me in English please contact me. Thanks!)