Boccaccio '70 (1962) review

Four "act" omnibus by four of Italy's top directors attempts to modernize Giovanni Boccaccio's tales of love and morality and is a really mixed - and, in most cases, rather mediocre - three-hour compilation. The most notable of the medium-sized films is De Sica's segment about a carnival worker (Sophia Loren) who auctions off a chance to spend a night with her - the winner is a mousy homebody, which sends the local men (and a macho truck driver) into fits of anger. Loren is magnetic even though she's given little to work with (aside from being a pouty sex-object). The Fellini is probably the second best, as a local puritan tries to remove all smut from Rome, but meets his match when they post a suggestive billboard of Anita Ekberg drinking milk right outside his apartment window. His sexual repression gets the better of him, and he has a fever dream of Ekberg coming to life (larger-than-life, actually) and smothering him with her breasts. It's one-note but charming, and you can see how it influenced the massive titty in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (* But Were Afraid to Ask). At the bottom of the pile are the Monicelli and Visconti (sorry, Luchino): the Monicelli feels like it's a sketch for a much longer movie (in early prints, this section was cut out of the final version) and the Visconti is just piffle, as Romy Schneider confronts unfaithful husband Tomas Milian about his running around and Milian rubs his face, looks perturbed and smokes; he never gets his come-uppance, and her suggestion that he pays her for sex (like he did with all those call girls) is not a proud moment for womanhood.