Books, Arts & Manners: The Smell of the Arty

IN 1975, Dino Risi, who had directed the brilliant Il sorpasso (The Easy Life), made a pleasantly mediocre movie, Profumo di donna (Scent of a Woman), from a novel by Giovanni Arpino. It starred Vittorio Gassman as an ex-army captain who lost his sight and one hand in a freak accident, and who, too proud to let the world know he is blind, lives a sequestered life except for occasional jaunts around Italy, for which he hires some young soldier on leave to be his seeing-eye boy, whom he always calls Ciccio. His adventures with the current Ciccio are told with a mixture of comedy and sentimentality, ending in a specious romance.

Hollywood has bought the title, Scent of a Woman, and the basic situation. But Bo Goldman’s screenplay upgrades the captain into Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, and downgrades everything else into the crassest and crudest comedy-drama. Slade is even allowed to keep both hands: Al Pacino, who plays him, must not look crippled in any way, and besides . . . but let’s not anticipate.

JS

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John Simon

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IN 1975, Dino Risi, who had directed the brilliant Il sorpasso (The Easy Life), made a pleasantly mediocre movie, Profumo di donna (Scent of a Woman), from a novel by Giovanni Arpino. It starred Vittorio Gassman as an ex-army captain who lost his sight and one hand in a freak accident, and who, too proud to let the world know he is blind, lives a sequestered life except for occasional jaunts around Italy, for which he hires some young soldier on leave to be his seeing-eye boy, whom he always calls Ciccio. His adventures with the current Ciccio are told with a mixture of comedy and sentimentality, ending in a specious romance.

Hollywood has bought the title, Scent of a Woman, and the basic situation. But Bo Goldman’s screenplay upgrades the captain into Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, and downgrades everything else into the crassest and crudest comedy-drama. Slade is even allowed to keep both hands: Al Pacino, who plays him, must not look crippled in any way, and besides . . . but let’s not anticipate.