Sex with a Smile
If Dario Argento is the Italian Alfred Hitchcock, Sergio Martino emerges as more and more the Italian Howard Hawks with each additional film of his that I see.
This, at least, is the impression I get from watching this pair of 1976 sex comedies, produced by brother Luciano and released internationally in English-language versions credited to Frank von Kuegelgen and Sonja de Dominicis: Whereas Argento is a self-conscious artist and a 'vertical' filmmaker in that he basically concentrates his talents narrowly on one genre, Martino is an unashamedly commercial director – he once commented "my films are like soft drinks – reliable, innocuous products for the mass consumption" – who works 'horizontally' in terms of turning his professional hand to comedies, thrillers, westerns, action/adventures etc as public tastes dictate.
Both Sex with a Smile and its sequel – here actually titled as "Love in 4 Easy Lessons" – take the same approach, constructed around a series of discrete 20 to 30 minute long story segments based around a stock situation and set of characters, recognisably set in the contemporary world of the 1970s via fashions and references – "women's lib", Linda Lovelace etc – but also hearkening back to and playing upon long-standing traditions dating back to the commedia dell'arte and bawdy (a)moral tales like those in Boccaccio's Decameron.
The two films also benefit from strong casts, combining moderately bankable international star names such as Marty Feldman and Ursula Andress with familiar Italian and Euro-cult figures like Edwige Fenech, Barbara Bouchet, Giovanna Ralli, Tomas Milian and Salvatore Baccaro (i.e. The Beast in Heat's titular monster).
Fan cultists should remember, however, that the short story format inevitably also imparts an element of guest-star syndrome to the proceedings compared to a more conventional 90 minute star vehicle feature.
Nevertheless, even if we don't get to see as much of Fenech, Bouchet or whoever else as we might like – though there's certainly no shortage of attractive actresses showing some or all of their best features, if you get my drift – the two films work pretty consistently as broad, crude comedies.
There's probably no point in going through the nine segments individually, not so much because of spoilers – the punchlines usually aren't that difficult to predict, as when a short-haired woman football player turns out to be a lesbian, for instance – more seeing as everyone will find his or her own favourites depending on interests and tastes.
But, if I were to pick out one highlight from each film then it would be "The Dream Girl" from the first and "The Trojan Wardrobe" from the second.
Dream Girl stars a virtually unrecognisable Milian, looking like the mutant offspring of Harold Lloyd in his coke-bottle glasses, as a sexually frustrated weirdo whose stalking of Fenech ultimately wins her over to the extent that she goes out to sexually assault him! Featuring finely judged comic performances from both stars it's also interesting for showing how far the psychoanalytic scenarios of the sort found in countless gialli could also be given a more comic inflection.
The Trojan Wardrobe stars Bouchet as the wife of a bed-hopping film producer (not, one assumes, based on Luciano Martino) who is desperately trying to get away and go see his latest casting couch call, in the shape of an attractive French starlet. Predictably all three end up back at the villa, along with a wardrobe containing one of the burglars who had been led to believe the place would be empty and ripe for the robbing…
I watched Sex with a Smile 1 and 2 via a bootleg DVD obtained through Ebay. It's not the Luminous Film and Video Wurks version, which only has the first film and looks to be from an Asian source; the spine of this disc says "Rare Cult Films on DVD-R" if that helps…
Anyway, both films are presented full-frame in English. Although some information is clearly being lost during the opening credits both times, it is less apparent once we are into the main body of each film, where there is little sense of any cropping adversely affecting the overall experience. The films are, after all, much more televisual, as it were, more reliant on fast-paced dialogue and exaggerated close-up gestures than giallo or spaghetti western style experiments with widescreen space. Otherwise, both films are watchable but little more, being somewhat fuzzy and lacking in fine detail in that VHS transfer way and, more in the case of the second, somewhat bleached out.
While Italian sex comedies will undoubtedly remain an acquired taste, even for fans of Eurocult such as ourselves, my sense is that you could do a lot worse than these…
If Dario Argento is the Italian Alfred Hitchcock, Sergio Martino emerges as more and more the Italian Howard Hawks with each additional film of his that I see.
This, at least, is the impression I get from watching this pair of 1976 sex comedies, produced by brother Luciano and released internationally in English-language versions credited to Frank von Kuegelgen and Sonja de Dominicis: Whereas Argento is a self-conscious artist and a 'vertical' filmmaker in that he basically concentrates his talents narrowly on one genre, Martino is an unashamedly commercial director – he once commented "my films are like soft drinks – reliable, innocuous products for the mass consumption" – who works 'horizontally' in terms of turning his professional hand to comedies, thrillers, westerns, action/adventures etc as public tastes dictate.
Both Sex with a Smile and its sequel – here actually titled as "Love in 4 Easy Lessons" – take the same approach, constructed around a series of discrete 20 to 30 minute long story segments based around a stock situation and set of characters, recognisably set in the contemporary world of the 1970s via fashions and references – "women's lib", Linda Lovelace etc – but also hearkening back to and playing upon long-standing traditions dating back to the commedia dell'arte and bawdy (a)moral tales like those in Boccaccio's Decameron.
The two films also benefit from strong casts, combining moderately bankable international star names such as Marty Feldman and Ursula Andress with familiar Italian and Euro-cult figures like Edwige Fenech, Barbara Bouchet, Giovanna Ralli, Tomas Milian and Salvatore Baccaro (i.e. The Beast in Heat's titular monster).
Fan cultists should remember, however, that the short story format inevitably also imparts an element of guest-star syndrome to the proceedings compared to a more conventional 90 minute star vehicle feature.
Nevertheless, even if we don't get to see as much of Fenech, Bouchet or whoever else as we might like – though there's certainly no shortage of attractive actresses showing some or all of their best features, if you get my drift – the two films work pretty consistently as broad, crude comedies.
There's probably no point in going through the nine segments individually, not so much because of spoilers – the punchlines usually aren't that difficult to predict, as when a short-haired woman football player turns out to be a lesbian, for instance – more seeing as everyone will find his or her own favourites depending on interests and tastes.
But, if I were to pick out one highlight from each film then it would be "The Dream Girl" from the first and "The Trojan Wardrobe" from the second.
Dream Girl stars a virtually unrecognisable Milian, looking like the mutant offspring of Harold Lloyd in his coke-bottle glasses, as a sexually frustrated weirdo whose stalking of Fenech ultimately wins her over to the extent that she goes out to sexually assault him! Featuring finely judged comic performances from both stars it's also interesting for showing how far the psychoanalytic scenarios of the sort found in countless gialli could also be given a more comic inflection.
The Trojan Wardrobe stars Bouchet as the wife of a bed-hopping film producer (not, one assumes, based on Luciano Martino) who is desperately trying to get away and go see his latest casting couch call, in the shape of an attractive French starlet. Predictably all three end up back at the villa, along with a wardrobe containing one of the burglars who had been led to believe the place would be empty and ripe for the robbing…
I watched Sex with a Smile 1 and 2 via a bootleg DVD obtained through Ebay. It's not the Luminous Film and Video Wurks version, which only has the first film and looks to be from an Asian source; the spine of this disc says "Rare Cult Films on DVD-R" if that helps…
Anyway, both films are presented full-frame in English. Although some information is clearly being lost during the opening credits both times, it is less apparent once we are into the main body of each film, where there is little sense of any cropping adversely affecting the overall experience. The films are, after all, much more televisual, as it were, more reliant on fast-paced dialogue and exaggerated close-up gestures than giallo or spaghetti western style experiments with widescreen space. Otherwise, both films are watchable but little more, being somewhat fuzzy and lacking in fine detail in that VHS transfer way and, more in the case of the second, somewhat bleached out.
While Italian sex comedies will undoubtedly remain an acquired taste, even for fans of Eurocult such as ourselves, my sense is that you could do a lot worse than these…
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