billcr12 Al Pacino made famous the American remake, and the original Italian film has the same basic outline. A blind army captain is assigned a young assistant as a guide. Vittorio Gassman is the captain in the first version, which is much less flamboyant than the Pacino portrayal.The captain is traveling from Turin to Naples to meet an army buddy who was injured in the same accident. The aide doesn't realize that the captain is planning a suicide with his friend. He asks his companion to describe the women they meet on their trip but the captain claims that he can see what a woman looks like by her scent. He is ashamed of his handicap and carries a picture of Sara, the girl he is in love with. The journey is an eventful one and Gassman is excellent as the captain. Pacino brings a more over the top attitude to the part, but both are good.

laurel21000 I came to this film expecting to see something transcendent. After all, the remake of Scent of a Woman with Al Pacino had been so wonderful. And I had never yet seen a Hollywood remake that even approached the original in quality. They are usually shattering disappointments.So I fully anticipated that Vittorio Gassman's version would far surpass Pacino's.But Surprise, Surprise. Finally. Who would have thought it. A Hollywood Remake that Ruled!!! Yay! It was not even a close contest, in my opinion. This film with Vittorio Gassman was for me flawed beyond redemption. I'm bewildered to read that it was even nominated for an Academy Award and has received other very prestigious awards.True, Gassman got the blind part of his role down. He had obviously done a lot of research and put in long rehearsals. And he had the potential to be great.The trouble was with the script. Gassman's character was a pig. An entertaining pig at times, an interesting pig at other times but never more than a full-fledged PIG.So while the film could engage you in the spectacle sense, it was really difficult to care about what happened to the characters or to root for them. The script just put them in a series of scenes, the common denominator being coarseness and then more coarseness.What was most offensive about this film were the scenes near the end in the Nepalese restaurant. Apparently Gassman had been friends with this family for many years -- since their daughters were children. So he was like a uncle figure.Then when this film catches up with them, the girls have grown into young ladies. And the Gassman character is shown treating them very disrespectfully (to put it mildly), exploiting them and preying on them.Except for the one he apparently loves. But why was it OK for him to exploit the other young girls? This predatory aspect of the film was so beyond offensive that it ruined the entire film and made it irredeemable and indefensible.Go see Al Pacino's Scent of a Woman instead. Pacino is brilliant. And the remake has heart and soul -- both of which are sorely absent from the original. The original has noisy drama but it is a hollow soulless drama.

michelelazzerini I just wanted to outline that Vittorio Gassman has been one of the most famous and skilled and talented Italian actor ever. Dino Risi has made a great direction, but I guess it has been easy with Gassman. Al Pacino is a great actor, but in this case, if we should make comparisons between the two, Gassman in the original and Pacino in the remake...Gassman is much more powerful. All characters in this original version seem to be much more real and strong, and seem to be much more appropriate to fit where this story comes from, the novel of Arpino. The soundtrack then is something no one should miss to notice: Trovaioli has been almost forgotten indeed.

michelerealini Dino Risi is one of the most important directors in Italian cinema, from the Fifties to the Seventies. Generally he's recognized as one of the fathers of Italian comedy ("commedia all'italiana") -the expression doesn't mean that the movies make you laugh all the time, it means that stories are a mix of happiness and bitterness, as life is. And not always there's a happy ending.Dino Risi worked with the "who's who" of Italian cinema, but he became famous also for casting frequently actors like Gassman, Ugo Tognazzi, Nino Manfredi and Alberto Sordi -they were ideal for characterizing Italian defects and virtues, above all defects...! "Profumo di donna" is taken from a book by Giovanni Arpino. In this 1974 movie Vittorio Gassman is a blind ex military officer who makes a trip from Genova to Naples. A young boy accompanies him. Fausto -Gassman's character- has to deal with the tragedy of being blind, he wants to commit suicide...Fausto is a man who lost everything; he can feel the presence of a woman (which explains the title "Profumo di donna", in English "Scent of a woman") but doesn't want to be loved for pity.It's difficult to describe a film which has a lot of themes -friendship, aging, the drama of being different from the others. But everything is treated in a delicate and moving way, although it's not a film for making you cry.Vittorio Gassman performance is simply superb -he won a prize in Cannes in 1975. The picture got that same year an Academy Award nomination.In 1992 Al Pacino starred in an American remake -"Scent of a woman", as I said the title is the exact translation from the Italian one. The actor won an Oscar but the film is not as good as the original. Apart from the extraordinary Pacino performance, everything is treated in a typical Hollywood way, with a more schematic story (for example the fact that the blind officer later helps his young companion is absent in the original film).I suggest the people who only saw the Al Pacino version to see the Vittorio Gassman film -it's softer and more complex at the same time.