This is a behemoth of a movie at nearly three and a half hours, but it's composed of four short films which can be viewed independently without losing much. The directors are Mario Monicelli, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, and Vittorio De Sica - high caliber, indeed. With themes of love, marriage, sex, and morality, and with stars like Romy Schneider, Sophia Loren, and Anita Ekberg on the bill, it held great promise for me. Unfortunately, the film peaks early, with a strong first two films giving way to pacing issues and misogyny in the second half. If I had to rate them individually it would probably be along the lines of 4 stars, 4 stars, 2.5 stars, and 3 stars.
The first act is charming, and involves the early days in the marriage of a couple of blue collar workers (Marisa Solinas and Germano Giglioli). The sense of claustrophobia in this story is stifling, starting with just how many people there are in the scenes at the office, a swimming pool, and a movie theater, which are beautifully composed by director Mario Monicelli. More important is how closed in the couple are at home while sharing a room behind a thin door with her family, who are always around. She's also subject to incredibly unfair and misogynistic rules for her employment in an accounting department, which state that she's not allowed to be married or get pregnant. Her prying boss with his maniacal haha! Laugh is seriously creepy as he keeps an eye on her at and away from the office. How they cope with this and adapt in a supportive way is quite touching - this is what marriage is, or should be. The moment when he picks her up at the waist and she extends her calves behind her as they kiss is so graceful and perfect. Along the way, the film also touches on unequal pay between spouses (in particular, the woman earning more than the man) and references abortion while talking about an unwanted pregnancy. It's sweet romance, not gritty neorealism, but at the same time, it's got these elements as well as the sacrifices love must make, especially in the early days when a couple are establishing themselves in the world. Really enjoyed this one.
Act two has a conservative man who has taken it upon himself to uphold morality in the city aghast over a giant billboard put up to advertise milk, one with Anita Ekberg reclining seductively. While the people in the park it's put up in have no real issue with it, this guy believes it to be a corrupting influence and tries to do everything he can to have it taken down. The film skewers the "morality police" that pop up seemingly in every culture and every age, and does so effectively because it shows that their issues with what they deem "indecent" relate back to their own sublimated desires. Fellini adds some wonderful surreal touches when the woman on the poster comes to life in giant form. I couldn't decide which of these three lines I liked best: "When I move my hips, convents shake," "What's wrong with looking at a naked woman?" or "Milk is good for you, whatever your age!" the latter with "milk" obviously representing sex. It's just a wonderful, playful piece, but one with a timely edge for 1962.
Unfortunately, act three from Luchino Visconti is a step down, despite the charms of the gorgeous Romy Schneider, and her doing everything she can with the part. The story is just too simple: the marriage of a wealthy couple is on the rocks when the wife discovers her husband has been visiting high-end prostitutes, availing himself of some of them eleven times. In a needlessly elongated preamble with the lawyers, we see that she has all of the power in this situation, as the business assets are under her name and her father can take action for her. Despite that, she veers between staying with him in an open marriage, going out and getting a job for herself, and then becoming (essentially) a call girl herself to him. She's asked him if he would prefer her to the prostitutes in a hypothetical situation, you see, and done the math, estimating they've had sex 150 times in their 13 month marriage, equating to $60,000 at the rate he's paying. She's also gotten sex tips from one of the prostitutes he likes, promising him she'll be just as good for the money. The main issue is that there is just not enough escalation in this story and it's too flat for its duration, but just as important is how icky this resolution feels, with her emotional as she sacrifices her body and dignity to save their marriage. It was incredibly simplistic male fantasy, even though it probably thought of itself as empathetic to the wife. Regardless, a complete miss, watchable only for Schneider.
The fourth act is also rather disappointing, despite direction from Vittorio De Sica and Sophia Loren at the height of her powers dancing and jiggling around playfully in a tight red dress. She plays an illiterate woman in Naples who works at a carnival attraction, one that's rife with obvious sexual imagery. The locals, leering over her body, aim air rifles at various objects. "Aim at the balloons," she says, squeezing one about the size of her breasts into a revolving cage. "Finished shooting? That's three loads." she tells a customer before pulling his change out of her bra, oblivious to the double entendre. "Aim at the target," she tells the others, bending over to put something down. When one wins a bottle of wine, he promptly opens it and sprays it all over dress. Later she's forced to strip it off because a bull has escaped, and it's red, you see. It's all terribly low-brow and beneath both Loren and De Sica.
Worse, however, is where the story goes from there. To make money fast, she has a guy auction off lottery tickets for 3,000 lire, the equivalent of two days pay for a working man, for the chance to have sex with her. All the middle-aged men in town, as horny as they are unattractive, go wild. When a bald, mousy, religious guy wins and then shows up to claim his prize, a younger man who she's fallen for angrily takes her trailer on a wild, bumpy ride, with them bouncing around inside it. He then stops, gets out, and smacks her around, feeling the right to so after having known her for a few hours. Ashamed of herself, she then gives the bald guy the lottery winnings instead of her body, thus making herself "virtuous," and getting the other man back. The fact that the transformation in her character occurred not from within but from a guy she barely knew hitting her, compounded with her then still wanting to be with him, was nauseating and regressive, despite the sexual "freedom" that Loren and her character seemed to represent. The story line here was unfortunate.
The first act is charming, and involves the early days in the marriage of a couple of blue collar workers (Marisa Solinas and Germano Giglioli). The sense of claustrophobia in this story is stifling, starting with just how many people there are in the scenes at the office, a swimming pool, and a movie theater, which are beautifully composed by director Mario Monicelli. More important is how closed in the couple are at home while sharing a room behind a thin door with her family, who are always around. She's also subject to incredibly unfair and misogynistic rules for her employment in an accounting department, which state that she's not allowed to be married or get pregnant. Her prying boss with his maniacal haha! Laugh is seriously creepy as he keeps an eye on her at and away from the office. How they cope with this and adapt in a supportive way is quite touching - this is what marriage is, or should be. The moment when he picks her up at the waist and she extends her calves behind her as they kiss is so graceful and perfect. Along the way, the film also touches on unequal pay between spouses (in particular, the woman earning more than the man) and references abortion while talking about an unwanted pregnancy. It's sweet romance, not gritty neorealism, but at the same time, it's got these elements as well as the sacrifices love must make, especially in the early days when a couple are establishing themselves in the world. Really enjoyed this one.
Act two has a conservative man who has taken it upon himself to uphold morality in the city aghast over a giant billboard put up to advertise milk, one with Anita Ekberg reclining seductively. While the people in the park it's put up in have no real issue with it, this guy believes it to be a corrupting influence and tries to do everything he can to have it taken down. The film skewers the "morality police" that pop up seemingly in every culture and every age, and does so effectively because it shows that their issues with what they deem "indecent" relate back to their own sublimated desires. Fellini adds some wonderful surreal touches when the woman on the poster comes to life in giant form. I couldn't decide which of these three lines I liked best: "When I move my hips, convents shake," "What's wrong with looking at a naked woman?" or "Milk is good for you, whatever your age!" the latter with "milk" obviously representing sex. It's just a wonderful, playful piece, but one with a timely edge for 1962.
Unfortunately, act three from Luchino Visconti is a step down, despite the charms of the gorgeous Romy Schneider, and her doing everything she can with the part. The story is just too simple: the marriage of a wealthy couple is on the rocks when the wife discovers her husband has been visiting high-end prostitutes, availing himself of some of them eleven times. In a needlessly elongated preamble with the lawyers, we see that she has all of the power in this situation, as the business assets are under her name and her father can take action for her. Despite that, she veers between staying with him in an open marriage, going out and getting a job for herself, and then becoming (essentially) a call girl herself to him. She's asked him if he would prefer her to the prostitutes in a hypothetical situation, you see, and done the math, estimating they've had sex 150 times in their 13 month marriage, equating to $60,000 at the rate he's paying. She's also gotten sex tips from one of the prostitutes he likes, promising him she'll be just as good for the money. The main issue is that there is just not enough escalation in this story and it's too flat for its duration, but just as important is how icky this resolution feels, with her emotional as she sacrifices her body and dignity to save their marriage. It was incredibly simplistic male fantasy, even though it probably thought of itself as empathetic to the wife. Regardless, a complete miss, watchable only for Schneider.
The fourth act is also rather disappointing, despite direction from Vittorio De Sica and Sophia Loren at the height of her powers dancing and jiggling around playfully in a tight red dress. She plays an illiterate woman in Naples who works at a carnival attraction, one that's rife with obvious sexual imagery. The locals, leering over her body, aim air rifles at various objects. "Aim at the balloons," she says, squeezing one about the size of her breasts into a revolving cage. "Finished shooting? That's three loads." she tells a customer before pulling his change out of her bra, oblivious to the double entendre. "Aim at the target," she tells the others, bending over to put something down. When one wins a bottle of wine, he promptly opens it and sprays it all over dress. Later she's forced to strip it off because a bull has escaped, and it's red, you see. It's all terribly low-brow and beneath both Loren and De Sica.
Worse, however, is where the story goes from there. To make money fast, she has a guy auction off lottery tickets for 3,000 lire, the equivalent of two days pay for a working man, for the chance to have sex with her. All the middle-aged men in town, as horny as they are unattractive, go wild. When a bald, mousy, religious guy wins and then shows up to claim his prize, a younger man who she's fallen for angrily takes her trailer on a wild, bumpy ride, with them bouncing around inside it. He then stops, gets out, and smacks her around, feeling the right to so after having known her for a few hours. Ashamed of herself, she then gives the bald guy the lottery winnings instead of her body, thus making herself "virtuous," and getting the other man back. The fact that the transformation in her character occurred not from within but from a guy she barely knew hitting her, compounded with her then still wanting to be with him, was nauseating and regressive, despite the sexual "freedom" that Loren and her character seemed to represent. The story line here was unfortunate.