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Rating:  - Great Seller
Product was perfect and the Seller bent over backwards to make sure I was happy. Highly Recommended.
Rating:  - 3 is lucky, four stories, not quite
Luciano and Vincenza was cut and we could've done better without it in Italian language only. It's a very long and talky story of a couple living together before marriage and the conflicts it creates with the girl's parents and her boss where she works. Almost a docudrama. Two stars.
The Temptation of Dr. Antonio: Always my favorite satire on censorship from director Fellini about a prude's ambition to ban a milk billboard has great fantasy sequences with Anita Ekberg. Four Stars.
The Job: A wealthy man has his affair with a hooker exposed by the media to his wife. She wants the job, too. The most cynical segment of the film. Three stars. The Raffle: By far the best of the four stories when Sophia Loren becomes the prize for a timid man who wins the lottery. It makes me laugh every time, even 30 years later. Four stars. There aren't many extras added to the discs, and they are mostly about The Raffle. You do have your choice of English or Italian for three of the stories.
Rating: - A pleasant diversion hatched from the time capsule
Days after seeing this there are a many nice things here that stick to the memory - a testament to the filmmakers at work. Most present day filmmakers, by comparison, seem utter cripples in terms of their ability to produce indelible images and exploit the personalities and physiognomies of their casts for our pleasure - not that there is, or ever was, an exploitable equivalent to, say, Sophia Loren in all of Hollywood.
The four tales presented here (by four very distinguished Italian directors) all share a common theme of the economics of sex.
The Mario Monicelli segment, 'Luciana e Renzo,' was clipped for international release, but, while a relatively weak link, it is by no means bad - it is, in fact, quite an agreeable entry point as the financial concerns of a young newlywed couple repeatedly and consistently put the kibosh on any attempts at romance. The music is by the great Piero ("Muh nah muh nah") Umiliani. The downscale locations are lovingly presented and look terrific.
As with his masterful 'Toby Dammit' segment of 'Histoires Extraordinaires' (a.k.a. 'Spirits of the Dead') 'Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio' (while not quite up to that level of tight perfection) proves Fellini wonderfully adept with the short form, even if it does run a little long before we are treated to the unforgettable spectacle of a Kong-sized Anita Ekberg (advertising what else but milk) terrorizing uptight prig Peppino De Filippo with her even-more-ample-than-usual charms. Nino Rota (of course) scores this and the Visconti segment that follows. Wonderful! Ekberg rocks!
Luchino Visconti's 'Il Lavoro' finds the director in his usual milieu among aristocrats brought low by the passage of their era and their own base natures. Beautifully lensed by Giuseppe Rotunno, this segment features a pair of engagingly physical performances by Tomas Milian and Romy Schneider - they lounge and sprawl about the opulent sets and use facial expression to marvelous effect. Milian, an aristocrat? Doing his best impersonation of a fully grown spoiled baby, he pulls it off - and Schneider more than matches him. A fine little piece of work all around.
Finally, Vittorio De Sica finishes things off with a bang with 'La Riffa.' Bouncing along, propelled by an Armando Trovajoli score, this one features Sophia Loren in her prime as a carny who picks up a little extra on the side by being the grand prize in a raffle - and nobody could fill out a red dress better! As with the sight of a kaiju-sized Ekberg rolling around in the grass or dwarfing Mussolini's Palazzo della Civilita Romana as she smothers a tiny, terrified man in her vast cleavage, Loren cha cha-ing around her trailer singing 'Soldi, Soldi, Soldi' (great song - and a hit at the time) is an iconic vision - alone worth the price of admission. Ooh la la! As with the other female leads, Loren proves that she's more than just a pretty, well, everything. She gives a resonant, smoldering yet full of heart, performance here, and has truckloads of screen presence that can't be accounted for by looks alone.
The film looks great, and the No Shame disc shows it off well, with a reasonable (not extraordinary, not lousy) cache of extras. Some of the sexual politics on display here may put off the hyperthenthitives out there - but, hey, this was Italy in the early sixties. What the hell do you expect? In spite of mores, the women in this movie shine in roles that are consistently strong - pointedly stronger than the male roles. As long as the film is (long enough to be spread out over two discs), I wouldn't have it any other way. It's a real treat.
Drink more milk!
Rating: - Viva Anita Eckberg, Romy Schneider and Sophie Loren!
Bocaccio 70 is a set of four vignettes (The U:S version included an additional work directed by Mario Monicelli), although I don' t know this chapter; I will comment you the works I know.
" The bet" is a demolishing, incisive and merciless of a decaying marriage, when the husband of a very rich wealthy and alluring woman (the exquisite and unforgettable Romy Schneider) in a role that fits for her to perfection. She personifies the woman of the sixties at the eve of the feminine liberation, and so did she when she notices has been cheated by his husband and so she will take her own and brutal revenge. This is by far, the most mature of the three portraits, with that exquisiteness so typical of Luchino Visconti.
"The temptation of Saint Anthony" is a cynical and mundane parable; a demolishing satire about the Freudian man, who suffers in his own flesh all the sins of the world, product of the voluptuousness emanated from Anita Eckberg in a huge poster with a suggestive semiotic lexicon. That portrait will become for him a true set of bad dreams, but the way in which is told a this acidic surrealistic and mordacious story is so brilliant that the rest of the plot runs for you.
Finally, "The raffle" is perhaps the less relevant and banal of the previous two. It has to do with the times and livings of woman in search of love in the middle of a raffle (a sharp metaphor of life), but the script is extremely weak to hold the previous entries of FEFE and Visconti.
Fortunately the first two justify plainly your purchase. A cult movie to enjoy over and over, due the pristine elegance and mordacity that have resisted the test of time.
Highly recommended!
Rating: - It's the Fellini segment, stupid!
5 stars because of the fantastic Fellini at his best-incomparable-Anita Ekberg-extravaganza! 3 stars to de Sica for lovely yet minor Sofia romp. 2 stars to theatrical budoir boredom of Visconti who can't find proper filter for his camera. 2 stars for Monicelli: was this a futuristic tale? 1 star to rather drab DVD package with hardly any meat on it (stills + thirty seconds of some black and white Sofia newsreel footage from 196?...nothing else!)
Overall: 5 stars because Il Maestro overwhelms every single complaint...in fact I suggest that you first watch disc 2 (Visconti/de Sica combo) and then go to disc 1 (Monicelli/Fellini)...
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