Boccaccio '70

Words are not enough for this wonderful quadruple satire. Yes, in the beginning there were FOUR, but the Mario Monicelli story got cut to economize on time. It is the least funny but very compelling tale of two newlyweds finding no space or time to be alone together. A beautiful story.

On the DVD distributed by the Dutch label Homescreen all 4 stories are included. Very odd though, it is a widescreen version, but from the top & bottom there are layers missing. So all the players standing up, get there heads chopped of. Astonishing, and very irritating. The sound every now and then echos, which is bad too. And the only subtitles available are in Dutch...

But to see these wonderful tales again, of Fellini, Visconti, De Sica & Monicelli, and to see Romy Schneider, Sophia Loren & Anita Ekberg play so majestically, might be well worth it to forget about the technical problems of this DVD. And let's simply hope CRITERION can obtain the rights shortly, for they will surely do this fourfold little miracle justice...

Boccacio was a 14th century Italian poet, storyteller and humanist who among other works wrote "Decameron", a collection of licentious stories which is very much appreciated even nowadays. In 1962 four great Italian film directors (Monicelli, Fellini, Visconti and de Sica) made this movie in four episodes (each one by one of them) inspired on the same theme of Bocaccio's work i.e. erotic love in our times under several of its forms: marital, repressed, adulterous and paid for. It combines Monicelli's humour with Fellini's symbolism, Visconti's psychological realism and de Sica's social and moral satire. In my opinion the best episode is de Sica's one, the story of a beautiful woman (Sophia Loren) who runs a shooting sideshow in a funfair. The less good is perhaps Visconti's one story of a rich couple whose wife revenges herself of her husband's infidelity in a curious and elegant way because of somewhat dull dialogues which is however compensated by the gorgeous interior sceneries of the palace where his episode takes place like he has already made us familiar with in some of his other movies. All the episodes combine humour, sensuality and light drama in balanced doses and will undoubtedly please the viewers.

The one thing I remembered about "Bocaccio70" was Romy Schnaider getting dressed in front of a mirror, in front of us. The film in his 4 segments has much more, but nothing better than Romy Schnaider in the Visconti segment. She is exquisite of course but in Visconti's hands she is superlative. Visconti, like George Cukor, knew how to guide actresses to their best. In the Monicelli episode Renzo and Lucia search for their privacy and Monicelli, a remarkable director, today 92 and still at work, manages to give the most straight forward, no frills segment. Fellini goes overboard with a 50 feet tall Anita Eckberg and a rather clumsy indictment at middle class morality. The De Sica episode has Sophia Loren, virgin and whore. When Sophia Loren was in De Sica's hands she was at her best. Her sympathy here takes over the episode and it becomes a joyful tale of nonsensical innocence. But, just as I remembered Romy Schnaider and Visconti are responsible for making this lightweight oddity really worth while.

I remember seeing this as a teenager when it was in the movies. An entertaining trio with a sexual theme but no nudity in the 60's. The best was 'The Censor' with a hyper-voluptuous Anita Ekberg as a 100 foot long billboard ad (for milk) that comes to life to torment the local censor -- absolutely hilarious. Then the magnificent Sophia Loren in "The Lottery" where the winner of the drawing wins her for the night. Last is with the late Romy Schneider in a bittersweet tale about a philandering husband who uses their wealth on prostitutes. At least that's what I remember after well over 30 years. If anyone knows where I can rent this again, please let me know.

A quartet mini-features from the 4 most prestigious Italian directors must be a rare treat for aficionados, but since shorts sometimes has been designed to experiment maestro's more daring or outlandish innovation, so a 1+1<2 formula is well acceptable for the viewers at least.

Act 1, Monicelli's amiable modern tale of a pair of young newlyweds working in the same factory while conceiving their nuptial facts since it breaches the unfeeling regulation. Monicelli's devotion and affection to the general mass is ubiquitous, the camera follows intimately to record the lovebirds' daily work, diversion and quagmire, and the bittersweet ending is unerringly sanguine which should be the bloodline runs inside the Italian lineage.

Act 2, Fellini's ever-first colour endeavour, surrealistic, sumptuous and luscious fantasy of a moral watchdog's eventual relinquishment towards a sexy bomb (an enormous 50 feet-tall Anita Ekberg), a female-exploitation gag which is constantly overplayed (not inclusively) in Fellini's canon. But visually, Fellini's manoeuvre of projecting different proportioned characters (creates two identical settings with different sizes) is quite nimble without exposing any shoddy clues (except the forged beasts, which is a buzzkill).

Act3, Visconti's pleonastic noble Count whose brothel scandal evokes a major crisis with his wealthy but vindictive wife, a higher-tier pastiche ends up with a sloppy reference of a disparaging stinking rich's gauche prostitute fetish. At any rate Romy Schneider is the best thing in it, pairs with a well-suited Tomas Milian, presents a paragon of bourgeois vulnerability and emptiness.

Act 4, another "prostitute" farce in a rural background, De Sica seduces the world with Sophia Loren's vulgar and crude beauty, a sultry whore will spend one night with the man who guess right of the lottery number, but it turns out to be a mental masturbation joke, quite tedious and a bit offensive.

Apparently this is another patchy miscellany doesn't live up to the test of the time, Monicelli's neo-realistic part (which suspiciously is taken out completely in the original US release) is the standout and quite a pity it didn't make up to a feature-length piece of work which producer Carlo Ponti had promised then.