Really Surprised!

Memorable, crazy movie

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Not that "Madamigella di Maupin" from 1966 as directed by Mauro Bolognini is a true gender-bending film in the traditional sense, but once again Bolognini seems convinced that love can be forced to come to its senses when women conceal themselves dressed as men. He does this in one tangent of "The Venetian Woman" twenty years after "Madamigella di Maupin." "Madamigella" is a much more satisfying film and the film is all but buried because it remains unclear what it was released as in the U.S.A. and there is little mention of it in directories as known. Catherine Spaak shows she is so much more of an actress than what she is known as by the American consumer today as many people still have not seen her brilliant performance in 1964's "The Empty Canvas" when she was just 17 years old. Robert Hossein has never been better as the somewhat bewildered Captain that she falls in love with while masquerading as a cleric to escape her family's eminent capture by the enemy followed by her being forced to enlist in the military where she comes under the command of the Captain who can not understand his feelings for this handsome soldier. Tomas Milian and Mikaela are also very good in highly comedic roles. The script is very good, the costumes by Danilo Donati, even the music by Franco Mannino, photography and editing make this Jolly production special. Filmed in Technicolor and Techniscope, Bolognini should have seen his film receive wide attention, and it is more deserving especially at the time of films like "Victor/Victoria" in the eighties and even now, but not many people are aware of this lovely film that very ably gets to the heart of matters universal. By all means, see this film.

This is one of the most overlooked Bolognini movies.Based on a Theophile Gautier novel,it is more French than Italian:it looks like some of Jacqueline Audry's feminist movies of the precedent decade (particularly " Le Chevalier d'Eon " 1960).Besides, the two leads are French .Magdeleine de Maupin is bored to death in her uncle's castle.The lord wants her to take refuge in a convent .She travels, dressed up as a priest for the country is not safe and ,mistaken for a man,she winds up as a recruit in captain Alcibiade's troops.The officer is sexually attracted by his new soldier ...Robert Hossein is well cast as the captain;at the same time,he was also playing Joffrey De Peyrac,Angélique's husband in the famous saga.