Powerful

A lot of fun.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Four directors tell tales of Eros fit for a 1970s Decameron. Working-class lovers, Renzo and Luciana, marry but must hide it from her employer; plus, they need a room of their own. A billboard of Anita Ekberg provocatively selling milk gives a prudish crusader for public decency more than he can handle. The wife of a count whose escapades with call girls make the front page of the papers decides to work to prove her independence, but what is she qualified to do? A buxom carnival-booth manager who owes back taxes offers herself for one night in a lottery: a nerdy sacristan and a jealous cowboy make for a lovers' triangle. In each, women take charge, but not always happily.Fellini's "Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio" (the second story) is really the highlight of the film. It could have been released separately and done very well, with its memorable sparring of a prudish doctor and a 50-foot woman (Anita Ekberg) who threatens to disrobe in public. The music in that section is also the best, with the children singing a milk jingle.Part one is also strong, and speaks of a forbidden lower-class (or working-class) romance, and part three is alright. Part four is almost an afterthought, in that the movie is over two hours at that point and viewers would have already decided if they were fans or not.

I couldn't believe how painfully boring and trite this movie is when I watched it in retrospect recently. Schneider seems to be sleep-walking through her segment. Ekberg is embarrassing with her dubbed laugh track that is incessant and stupid. Was this film made before or after "Attack of the 50-foot Woman"? Loren is the closest to being believable, but there are moments when she seems to be hamming it up as an inexperienced actor.The plots of the 4 segments meander and go nowhere. Act I seems like a first attempt by a student studying film. Act II is a sophomoric joke--stereotypically Italian. Women are their (titter! titter!) mammaries, so "Drink more milk" (giggle giggle). And Fellini (a master elsewhere) is literally trotting out what come across as merely cinematic clichés for the audience only this time in color. There's a bus-load of "cool, hip, black" American jazz-savvy Americans; a quick-step marching brass band wearing black feathered hats who mid-march do a wild and crazy 360 turn as they march, right out of a previous Fellini flick. What's their point here? Oh, boy, I felt like I was really sopping up Italian culture then. Act III about the young couple suffering from modern ennui is lifeless drawing room "comedy". It drags on and on, and Schneider seems to be sleep-walking through it. Act IV, perhaps the most intelligent and entertaining of the segments, repeats itself maddeningly, and some of the lottery-exchanging tricks by the locals just don't seem to make much sense.Supposedly Boccaccio was noted for his naturalistic dialog when he wrote. This film is mis-titled. It shares nothing in common with Boccaccio or "The Decameron". One thing that struck me while I was watching this lesson in boredom was how idiotic the dialog was. Someone says something like "I wish you would close the door," and the response is "But Mario needs new shoes, and my heart is broken." WHA? Non sequiturs abound. Oh, I felt so artsy. The dialog in the film comes across as a parody of Italian art films from the '60s and '70s. Only thing, THIS is the real thing. Yuck! Would I have felt that way about this film back then? Hard to say. I don't remember even having seen it then, and perhaps those visions of Italian culture that now seem stereotypical or trite may have been boldly decameron-esque back then.

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.

An Italian portmanteau film supposedly inspired by Boccaccio's Decameron (though I don't see a connection, honestly). The film was released in a truncated version in most places, with Monicelli's opening segment cut. The other three directors protested by refusing to promote the film when it debuted at Cannes.Titled "Renzo e Luciana," it's probably my second favorite of the four films. It's just a very simple love story, a slice-of-life sort of thing. It may be a tad slight, but it's sweet and utterly charming. Marisa Solinas and Germano Gilioli play a young couple. As the film opens, they're secretly getting married, as Solinas' job as a secretary demands that she be single (probably so her boss can hit on her constantly). Gilioli moves in with Solinas and her family in a crowded little apartment. There is no privacy there. And it's nearly impossible to find it anywhere else, either. The short doesn't really have an ending, but it's so enjoyable it doesn't matter. Solinas is an incredibly beautiful woman (the women of Boccaccio '70 are definitely the major selling point).Fellini's "Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio" is the highlight of the film. Peppino De Filippo stars as Dr. Antonio Mazzuolo, an upstanding citizen who wishes to protect Rome from temptations of the flesh. This proves especially difficult when a gigantic billboard of a scandalously dressed Anita Ekberg, with bare legs and heaving bosoms, declaring loudly "DRINK MORE MILK!" is erected outside of his apartment building one day. It attracts people from all over the city to visit and ogle and create an Ace in the Hole-like carnival right in front of it (not blocking Dr. Antonio's view, of course). After much protestation, though, the good doctor succeeds in getting the billboard's salacious elements covered. This has consequences, however, as Ekberg exits the billboard, giant-sized, to torment the man. This one is nearly as good as the other famous Fellini portmanteau segment, "Toby Dammit" from Spirits of the Dead.Luchino Visconti directs the third segment, "Il lavoro," another more simple, slice-of-life film where a count, Tomas Milian, having been accused in the newspaper of visiting prostitutes, is tormented by his wife, Romy Schneider. It all takes place within a few rooms in their mansion, as Schneider threatens to leave Milian (and leave him poor, as the money comes from her father) and get a real job. She also insists that he pay her a prostitute's fee for all the sex she's given him for free during their marriage. This was probably my least favorite segment, but I still liked it a lot. It may be the most emotionally complex of the four.Vittorio De Sica presides over the final segment, "La riffa." This one features the memorable image of Sophia Loren, at the height of her beauty, in a luminous red dress (and, when she takes it off a couple of times, a black bra). She runs a carnival booth, and all the men of the town are obsessed with her, frequently bothering her with their provincial horniness. She's entered in a lottery where she will go out on a date with whoever wins. Her admirers all lose the drawing to the meek, dorky sacristan of the local church and they desperately try to bribe him for the ticket. Meanwhile, the whole deal upsets the young man whom she's been seeing in her free time, and he attempts to sabotage their supposed sexual encounter. I've never been a fan of Loren, mostly because I felt she was almost too beautiful (that's definitely the reason that she bothers me so much in De Sica's Two Women), but she's wonderful here. I also really loved the performance of the sacristan (I don't see the actor's name listed on IMDb), an innocent little man who could never imagine getting within a hundred yards of a woman like Loren. His final encounter with her is genuinely touching.The four segments together run nearly three and a half hours, but, since they have nothing to do with each other, it's easy to watch one at a time. Portmanteau films can often vary a lot in quality, and most (even this one) are forgotten pretty quickly. This one is definitely a must-see for fans of Italian cinema, or any of the individual directors. The print by NoShame is gorgeous. Unfortunately, it is out of print, but Kino is re-releasing it (apparently on Blu-Ray, too, which should look even more outstanding) in September.