La farce tragique

Otherwise known as 'Jester's Supper' this film of Alessandro Blassetti is adapted from the play by Sem Benelli and set in the nest of vipers which is the 15th Century court of Lorenzo di Medici. It looks stunning courtesy of the production design and art direction of Virgilio Marchi and Ferdinando Ruffo with a luscious score by Guiseppe Becce.

Heart-throb Amadeo Nazzari plays against type as an unconscionable thug and Clara Calamai is suitably seductive. She astonished everyone of course with her next performance as Giovanna in Visconti's 'Ossessione'. I am none too sure if Oswaldo Valenti ever appeared on stage but judging by his performance in this as the vengeful Giannetto he would have made a marvellous Iago.

Extremely popular at the time the film is mainly remembered now for the blink-or-you-miss-it topless scene and more shockingly for the summary execution by partisans of husband and wife team Oswaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida for alleged collaboration with the Fascists.

All-in-all a bizarre, outrageous and eminently watchable opus from one of Italy's most dependable directors.

Another classy wartime adaptation of a popular historical piece whose title roughly translates to THE DINNER OF PRACTICAL JOKES and deals with a couple of rowdy brothers who have a penchant for bullying their fellow-men; when the younger of the two has to leave town, one of their frequent victims decides to avenge himself on the other one (played by Italian heartthrob Amedeo Nazzari - here bearing a striking resemblance to Errol Flynn) by playing a trick on him. But, what starts as a jest soon takes a serious turn and, inevitably, it all ends in tragedy...

As had been the case with both I PROMESSI SPOSI (1941) and THE IRON CROWN (1941; also directed by Blasetti), the film is stylish and handsomely mounted - though its stage origins are betrayed by being mostly filmed in interiors. Still, the highly intriguing plot - with its many twists and turns (particularly towards the ironic, even Shakespearean, finale) - keeps one compelled to watch and the performances are all quite good with the most impressive being that of Osvaldo Valenti as the slighted and revenge-seeking nobleman. The film is also notorious for being the first mainstream Italian movie to feature full topless nudity during a brief but startling scene where luminous leading lady Clara Calamai's blouse is ripped off of her by the lusty Nazzari (an action which would certainly have shocked his then legion of fans); Calamai herself achieved perhaps her greatest fame much later when she played the murderess in Dario Argento's DEEP RED (1975). Having said that, both the aforementioned I PROMESSI SPOSI and THE IRON CROWN had previously featured a discreet amount of nudity in one sequence although not by their main character...

A chilling footnote: Fascist Valenti and his then-pregnant wife Luisa Ferida (who also appears in the film as one of three alleged mistresses of Nazzari's - the other being Elisa Cegani, as with Ferida herself from THE IRON CROWN, and a very young Valentina Cortese) were executed by a group of partisans on the last day of WWII, one of whom went on to become President of Italy!

As an evocation of the Italian Renaissance, this is a film so visually sumptuous that its only rival is Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. Its drama, though, is less in the poetic vein of Shakespeare and more in the trashy blood-and-thunder style of the Jacobean playwrights. A dizzying brew of lust, sadism and obsessive (no, more like psychotic) revenge, La Cena delle Beffe was a predictable shock to the straight-laced censors in Mussolini's Italy.

Most of their horror was reserved for the graphic near-rape of the lading lady, Clara Calamai, cast convincingly enough as an amoral courtesan in 16th century Florence. Glimpse the first shot of naked breasts in the Italian sound cinema, as the lusty but none-too-bright Neri (Amedeo Nazzari) seizes her by force from the brainy but reptilian Giannetto (Osvaldo Valenti). The loser, of course, wreaks a brutal revenge. He has Neri declared mad, bound up and tortured by a parade of cast-off mistresses and cuckolded husbands.

This tale becomes all the more chilling once we realise that Valenti - whose performance here makes Laurence Olivier as Richard III look like a Boy Scout - was allegedly a notorious Fascist in his off-screen life. He and his wife Luisa Ferida, who plays a small role as one of the ex-mistresses, were among the lunatic fringe accused of collaborating with Il Duce for his last blood-soaked stand in the Republic of Salo. Come the Liberation, the couple were gunned down by left-wing Partisans.

Never mind. La Cena delle Beffe is just a movie... Or is it?