Una storia moderna –L’ape regina

L’ape regina is a woman who, with unwavering sweetness, kills her husband, a consenting victim, by inducing him to make love; for her, enjoying sex with her husband is not the purpose of marriage, procreation is. So when finally pregnant, she no longer needs her husband, who dies from consumption. I wrote the story with Parise, but then I lost track of him, and the film was held up for eight months by the censorship board because of a shot of a long nightgown with a hole in it, around which was embroidered the maxim, “I don’t do it for my pleasure but to please God”. The family was a cornerstone of Italian society, and at that time, I’m talking about 1962-63, divorce was not even remotely talked about, there was only the Roman Rota. For Marina Vlady in L’ape regina, the family is only a means for fulfilling her conception of woman, motherhood, which is what she was raised for within a very clear function of family power. The man, however, is not a victim; he is jointly responsible for the whole relationship right from the very beginning.

Marco Ferreri, L’avventurosa storia del cinema italiano. 1960-1969,
edited by Franca Faldini and Goffredo Fofi, Feltrinelli, Milan 1981