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"Woman Times Seven"/Shirley MacLaine Italian Style

V. Risoli | Highlands, NJ, USA | 11/04/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In the sixties, the Italian cinema that was at a height had particular tendency to produce episodic movies such as "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" (1964) (all three episodes directed by Vittorio DeSica and winner of the Foreign Film Oscar) and "Boccaccio '70" (1962) (with episodes by different directors: Fellini, Visconti and DeSica). DeSica (who was best known for "The Bicycle Thief" (1949) was considered "superb" and an auteur. He also acted before the camera in, for example, 1965's and Paramount's "The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders" starring Kim Novak.

DeSica became somewhat Americanized with his success and in 1966 directed Peter Sellers in a Neil Simon written script, "After the Fox." In 1967, he supplied Shirley MacLaine with a showcase of seven different roles in a series of episodes that, as with these episodic films, some are better than others but generally this batch are genuinely touching on the whole, all dealing with the general theme of "adultery." Peter Sellers, the great (and under-rated) Alan Arkin, Anita Ekberg and Michael Caine are some of her co-stars in a script by Cesare Zavattini (the author of some of DeSica best known films (including two of Sophia Loren's best: "Two Women" and "Marriage, Italian Style") and lush parisienne music by Riz Ortolani (whose forgotten masterpiece from "The Yellow Rolls-Royce" (in which MacLaine had a part),"Forget Domani" should surely be re-released). Best of the episodes, however, and perhaps worth the cost of the DVD is the final one, "Snow" in which Shirley and Anita Ekberg are followed by Michael Caine (MacLaine has a charming naivete about her as she realizes the stranger following them is indeed interested in her (of the two when they decide to test him by splitting up), "Jean" (MacLaine's character in "Snow") who never thought to cheat on her husband (because she "never found anyone better than her husband") becomes enamoured by the idea. As it begins to snow, leaving their footprints, it never connects with her that he is her absurdly jealous husband's detective "tail." What she gathers from this "imagined?" un-encounter should be savored. It being the ending episode, the fabulous music swells up for the end credits and marks a sense of having watched a grand film.
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