Lockende Unschuld

This film is a very beautiful bittersweet comedy with the great Ugo Tognazzi and a very young and splendid Catherine Spaak. Antonio is a middle-aged industrialist who has succeeded in his professional life but missed out on his private life: divorced, incapable of a lasting love relationship with women and barely recognizing his son when he visits him at boarding school... When meeting a group of young hedonistic and liberated teenagers, he falls irresistibly under the spell of the beautiful and provocative Francesca, her freshness and her innocence. Constantly mocked and ridiculed by the group of young people, he finds himself in a way in front of a mirror which gives him a very pitiful image of himself. The culmination of this "demolition work" being the scene where he is"crowned" Indian chief on the beach... Without speaking about the male topless beauty contest...Subjugated by Francesca, Antonio accepts all humiliations, to the point of becoming truly pathetic. Under the air of a comedy, the result is very melancholic and even bitter. Unable to hold back Francesca, the great industrialist Antonio, rises to be a weak, lost and overwhelmed man. As for this golden youth issue from the economic boom years, she is described as idle, carefree, superficial and even sometimes cruel. The generational gap is abysmal and nothing will come to bridge it. Luciano Salce will have spared no one in this film which absolutely deserves to be discovered and appreciated at its true value.

Someone PLEASE PLEASE tell me where I can obtain a copy of this Ugo Tognazzi vehicle from 1962, which also starred the luscious Catherine Spaak. One of many of early 60s Italian comedies that explored the bittersweet longings of aging adults amongst youth culture, CRAZY DESIRE or THIS MAD URGE boasted Ennio Morricone's first score and some haunting pop songs of the period, plus a lot of good looking Italian youth in beachwear. Most poignant, though, was the aging but dapper Tognazzi in his sports car, clinging wistfully to his younger self. This film is burned in memory now for 30 years as I, myself, approach that turning point. See it with someone you're growing older with.

Voglia Matta is virtually lacking in any redeeming qualities, apart from occasionally competent if uninspired cinematography. Aside from Tognazzi, the acting is substandard and even he seems to be going through the motions. The characters and motives of nearly everyone lack credibility, and none are likeable or sympathetic much less amusing. The scenarios are beyond absurd, unintentionally. The gang of adolescents are extremely grating - some middle-aged writer's idea of what today's spunky youth (ca. 1961) probably kind of ought to be like, with a double helping of casual indifference towards others. The scene of Spaak forcing Tognazzi to careen at high speed down a small winding road, threatening dozens of people's lives in the process, is treated as a grand and clever jape. And that's about the highlight of the film. Almost every comic gag falls flat. It's hard to see why even a contemporary audience was supposed to find humor in a 39 year old father repeatedly pawing a 15 year old girl.

If the film can be said to have had a purpose at all, it was to show off Catherine Spaak's beach body. That is the one thing it managed to do.

The older, positive reviews of this film are puzzling. It is one to avoid.

Movie is about midlife crisis. This is the story of a man who is getting old and longing for his youth. Soundtrack by Morricone is fantastic.

A middle-aged man has always led an active life and struggles to accept the passing of time. During a trip he meets a group of boys and joins them, eventually falling in love with a sixteen year old.

However, he will be forced to admit that there is an age for everything and that for him that time has now passed.

In this movie we see the drama of a man who must recognize that his time has passed despite not wanting to recognize it. I was a little surprised that no one in the movie has any problems with the fact that a fifty-year-old falls in love with a sixteen-year-old, but obviously those were other times.