In a way, "Malena" kept reminding us of a famous photograph by Ruth Orkin, in which a young American woman is seen walking alone in an Italian street where there must be about forty men that are ogling this beautiful young creature in different degrees of desire shouting things about what they would love to do with her. In Giuseppe Tornatore's "Malena", the young woman at the center of the story, suffers that kind of sexual predatory practice from all the men in the little town in Sicily where she lives. It appears Italian men, then, as well as now, can express anything at all, especially for their big friends' benefit, about their opinions of how they feel about a girl. Even the town's women have no qualms in shouting nasty things as Malena passes them by.
