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.
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.