Boccaccio 70

In 1962 Carlo Ponti produced the film Boccaccio 70, from an idea of Cesare Zavattini. The film is a satire on Puritanism and moral hypocrisy, ispired to the Decameron, but with no specific reference to the work. The experiment is to be read as a sort of actualisation of the themes of XIV century Italy in the Italian society of the 60s. It contains four episodes, the work of Federico Fellini (Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio), Luchino Visconti (Il lavoro), Vittorio De Sica (La riffa) and Mario Monicelli (Renzo e Luciana), with screenplay by Giovanni Arpino and Italo Calvino, which draws its inspiration from L'avventura di due sposi, drawn from Calvino’s sylloge (Gli amori difficili). In the cast were famous names such as Peppino De Filippo, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren, Romy Schneider, Paolo Stoppa and Romolo Valli. The sound track[1], composed by Nino Rota, was a great success.

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[1]Le tentazioni del Dottor Antonio, from Fellini & Rota, 2000.