Details

Release year: 1964

Storyline

A modest Neapolitan man meets a young woman with excessive hairiness. He exhibits her at fairs and marries her. It is after marriage that he receives a tempting offer from a French manager.

Top credits

Directors

Marco Ferreri

Writers

Cast

Ugo Tognazzi — Antonio Focaccia
Annie Girardot — Maria Esposito in Semola
Achille Majeroni — Maestro Pasquale Majaroni
Elvira Paolini — Chambermaid in Paris

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Did you know

• Based on the life of Julia Pastrana, a Mexican sideshow performer in the 1800s. As shown in this film (which was not shown in the version released in Paris), Julia died giving birth to a son with her condition, and her husband/manager exhibited their mummified bodies as a sideshow.

• This trivia contains spoilers. The version of this film released in Italy and France, has a completely different ending that the English dubbed version released in the UK and the US. In the Italian/French version, Maria dies giving birth to a son with her condition, and her husband exhibited their mummified bodies in a sideshow. This it how it happened with her real life counterpart, Julia Pastrana. Audiences in the UK/US were displeased with such a downbeat ending, so a different ending was devised where Maria's hirsute condition is eliminated during childbirth, and her child is born normal. No longer having an act to exhibit, Antonio goes to work as a laborer...but he doesn't mind, for he has grown to love his wife and child.