Pietro Germi's 1972 comedy Alfredo Alfredo stars Dustin Hoffman as a young man named Alfredo who makes a living as a bank teller. Alfredo is, in typical Dustin Hoffman style, fairly nebbish and more than a little meek and mild, but he's a nice enough guy. When we meet him he's head over heels in love with a beautiful woman named Maria Rosa (Stefania Sandrelli) - he can't get her off of his mind and would consider himself the luckiest man alive should he be able to make her his bride. When he somehow bucks the odds and manages to do just that, it looks like his dream has come true, until he quickly realizes that for all her sex appeal, she's about as exciting to him as a wet dish rag. They consummate their marriage and soon enough she's pregnant and he's stuck with her.

Things get a little more complicated for Alfredo when he loses interest in Maria Rosa and starts to take a liking to the equally beautiful Carolina Betti (Carla Gravina). While Maria Rosa deals with the pregnancy, Alfredo tries to figure out what he can do about Italy's tough divorce laws to get out of his relationship with Maria Rosa and get into a brand new relationship with sexy Carolina. Hilarity should ensue, but it never really does.

While Pietro Germi had a pretty good track record with Italian sex comedies in the seventies, Alfredo Alfredo never really hits a proper stride. At just a few minutes shy of the two hours mark, you can't help but feel that some more judicial editing might have improved the film quite a bit, and much of what has been left in feels like padding. The repetition of a few key comedic elements draws things out longer than they need to go on and what starts of as humorous soon finds itself tired, predictable and even a little bit irritating.

The film is shot with a fair bit of style and makes good use of some interesting Italian locations, but that's about as kind as we can get here. Hoffman, a talented actor to be sure, doesn't come across as particularly convincing as a young Italian man and seems to be more or less coasting through this one, not doing much to make his character stand out from similar characters he has played before and after he made this film. You definitely get the impression he's channeling the ghost of Ben Braddock, arguably his most famous character from 1967's The Graduate and a film in which his meek qualities really worked in his favor. The female cast members, always a highlight in vintage Italian sex comedies, all look great - Stefania Sandrelli is curvy and sexy and alluring with her dark hair and appealing figure, but she soon shows her true colors and her character grates on your nerves as soon as it does on Alfredo's. This was the point, obviously, but it doesn't do much to endear us to her or allow us to feel much sympathy for her. Carla Gravina is also drop dead gorgeous here and the camera loves her, but she's not given much to do except look good.

Ultimately you get the impression with this picture that Germi was trying to milk the formula which had been so successful for him a few years earlier when he made Divorce Italian Style (Stefania Sandrelli even appeared in that one too!) more than a decade prior in 1961. What was fresh and funny and topical then had been done a few times and with better results by the time that this picture came along.

Video:

Alfredo, Alfredo starts off in a non-anamorphic 1.85.1 widescreen transfer but once the opening credits finish, it shifts to a 1.33.1 fullframe presentation. The source materials used are a bit soft but otherwise in pretty good shape and there isn't any obvious cramping or cropping indicating that this might be open matte. Colors look alright, and if the image isn't reference quality and might have looked better without the excess headroom, the presentation is perfectly watchable, if unremarkable.