Boccaccio '70
As an institution with a consistent focus on the history of cinema, a comprehensive Federico Fellini retrospective is the least we can do to mark his centennial. He was a great inventor of cinematic forms and a complex artist – paradoxical, tormented, light-hearted, provocative, introspective, brutal, idealistic and jaded all at once. He recreated the world through his lens, while remaining a sharp observer of his contemporaries and the many sensitivities of his time.
Four movies inspired by Boccaccio's novellas.
*La Riffa : Vittorio De Sica * A timid lottery winner is entitled to one night with the attractive Zoe (Sophia Loren). Zoe, however, has other plans.
Il lavoro : Luchino Visconti l Lavoro (The Job) is about an aristocratic couple. The husband is caught by the press visiting prostitutes. After saying she intends from then on to work for her income, the wife demands payment from her husband for her sexual services, to which he agrees.
*Renzo e Luciana : Mario Monicelli * In Renzo e Luciana (Renzo and Luciana) a young couple tries to hide their marriage and the wife’s supposed pregnancy from the draconian rules at their place of employment, which has banned female employees from getting married and having children. Their efforts – both at their shared home (having temporarily moved into her family's crowded apartment), and at work (where they go so far as to pretend not to know each other) – causes pressure to mount on the couple. Their hope is to make it through until they have managed to save some money to move out and are dependent on Renzo going to night school to become an accountant. Finally, their life together has some privacy, but they are increasingly separated by their respective shifts: he returns home from work just when she has to leave to go there.
Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio : Federico Fellini Doctor Antonio, an unbending moralist, waged a personal war against spreading immorality. He improvised sermons in front of a boy-scout audience, he bothered couples looking for intimacy, he even tore off covers from magazines displayed at newspaper kiosks. He got really angry when a provocative billboard showing a smiling buxom woman, advertising 'Drink more milk', was hung just below his windows. He made an unsuccessful effort at having the billboard removed. He then decided to throw ink bottles onto the billboard to stain it. The billboard was then censored by local authorities, but heavy rains uncovered the tempting woman’s body once again. This image started haunting him in his dreams until he was found having hallucinations on the billboard he had climbed. While Doctor Antonio was being driven to hospital by ambulance Cupid was smiling at him scornfully.
