Mio figlio Nerone

MS SWANSON is wonderful!!--She knows she's laying it on and lays it on great!! Today--when actresses can work about as long as the guys--she could have been a great comic actress, and really, was, she was an amazing woman!! When she made this movie, the stereotype of the over dramatic former silent film star actress was, of course, already firmly established. Instead of fighting against this stereotype, just as in SUNSET BOULEVARD, she plays it to the hilt.This suits the Marx Brothers style perfectly. Though in her late fifties at the time of this filming, she is still a very beautiful woman. Also, she had a shape,not just skin and bone like most actresses now days.

Nero's Big Weekend / Mero's Mistress / Mio Figlio Nerone

Nero is normally used as a bad guy opposite a (comic) hero, but here he is himself at the centre of the story. Tension rises when his mother Agrippina visits him in his seaside villa and tries to coerce him into tending to state affairs. She has to rival with Seneca and Poppea who try to manipulate him in the opposite direction. The latter two try to have her murdered but she seems to be immortal. Meanwhile, Nero has taken to singing. An international cast in a unique comedy. I do not mean that it is an all-time masterpiece. Rather, it is a strangely factual comedy. The attempts at Agrippina's life are all taken literally from the writings of Suetonius. All they did was make it all happen in one weekend. Somehow, you get the feeling this is almost exactly what history was like.

The movie was dubbed in several languages. The German dub or the UK version are unavailable. The US version puts more emphasis on Poppea than on Agrippina, but what is worse, it is missing the final punchline - shame! Try the French or the Italian version, which are anyway the only ones available on DVD (as of 2010). English subtitles have appeared on the internet.

A very easy portrait of episodes of Nero reign. The names of actors are the basic motif to see it. But the acting is very nice, seductive , the irony is well crafted and Alberto Sordi as immature emperor is just admirable.

A comedy without high ambitions, giving not exactly revelation but good open window to the parody of Italian sandals and sand films , for a beautiful self irony of Gloria Swanson and for the young Brigitte Bardot proposing a lovely Poppea. And, not the last Vittorio De Sica as a Seneca proposing the joy of acting.

In short, a charming film for the dose of irony, for remind of cliches about Nero and for the sparkles about Nero proposed, in Quo Vadis, by Sienkievicz and ...Peter Ustinov.

A colorful parody or persiflage on the Roman Empire, made with some production value and some known actors - Barbara Shelley, Gloria Swanson and Bridget Bardot among some known Italian actors like Vittorio De Sica or Alberto Sordi (at least if you know a tiny bit of Italian movies). Nero's Mistress will be an entertaining ride - if the kind of humor provided strikes you, if not, you won't enjoy this ride. For sure Nero's Mistress aka Mio figlio Nerone does not play in the same league as the immortal and ueber-delicious Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), but this one was made decades before that masterpiece.

A very silly movie indeed. A spoof of Nero and ancient Rome. I loved Nero's elegiac song in the palace court, surrounded by the chubbykin cherubs. Nero to mamma Agrippina, "How beautiful you are," he says, as he plans to kill her and others who annoy him or stand in his way in this movie where everybody seems to have homicide on their minds and snakes in their hands. Nero's philosophy: "I have more important things than politics. I have to sing." Seneca turns the criticism of Nero's singing like a dog into a laudatory affirmation.

This is all Marx Brothers mayhem, with the weirdest casting imaginable: Alberto Sordi as the demented Nero (perfect), Gloria Swanson as mom Agrippina (seething), Brigitte Bardot as gold-digger Poppea (lusty), Vittorio De Sica as Seneca (cautiously two-faced). The movie's release in America in a dubbed version was minimal, but it's really quite enjoyable.