Les jeunes filles de San Frediano

Zurlini's first film is already his first superlative-worthy masterpiece, a fantastically perceptive neo-realist comedy beautifully shot by the legendary Gianni di Venanzo in superpoetic, perfectly contrasted, deep-focus, state of the art mid-'50s black and white. It depicts the wiles and seduction techniques of a working class Don Juan named Bob (after Robert Taylor) as he goes around trying to make full use of his attractiveness to women, attempting to balance unscrupulous behavior and a need for freedom with cultural pressures and a relatively soft heart. Needless to say, he ends up biting a little more than he can chew on and farce makes its entrance, Italian style. There aren't many films that keep a smile on your face from beginning to end simply because there's no need to cut through some thick hypocritical B.S. to get to the essentials, the 'truths,' a film universally valid about almost every observation that it makes--Zurlini's "Girls of San Frediano" is one of them. Zurlini's art is based on his own poetic variation on the moral imperatives of neo-realism, firmly rooted in the significance he gives to ambiguous reality above any film-editing that pins things down to one interpretation, the way 99.9% of Hollywood films and European Cinema-of-Quality films were made, always telling you exactly what to think, in case you happened to have any doubts. `The Girls of San Frediano'manages to be accessible and amusing to almost anyone without sacrifcing wit in the process. The cultured wit of Zurlini turns the film into a psychological study of human vanity in action worthy of Rohmer, Bunuel, and Fellini, captured in all its essentials and held up for examination, interpretation, and true enlightenment.

This sort of tongue in cheek comedy is truly unique, an examination of the Italian male persona with fantasy exaggerations that are hilarious, a guy that can't stop himself from picking up women while en route to his dates, women swooning over him, laying awake in anguish, the use of the English-language word "Bob" cracked me up every time it was used, similar to in "Being John Malkovich" when people were thrown out onto the New Jersey turnpike, these comedy bits worked. I couldn't help thinking David Lynch had seen this film once and used it for his Twin Peaks twisted version of "Bob." The collection of women here are gorgeous, Zurlini's exquisite technique is already evident in this early film, and for pure comedy, it was a mixture of Pietro Germi's outrageous Sicilian reflections in his 64 film "Seduced and Abandoned" and Fellini's "La Dolce Vita."