违法婚姻 (1963)

Omnibus features were particularly popular Italian exports in the 1960s as they gave audiences a sampler plate of exciting foreign directors, stars, perspectives and oft-racy themes in one easily digestible package. This rare, star-studded curio waxes very cheeky about the Catholic Church's iron-clad hold on the sanctity of marriage and the modern omnipresence of divorce in five episodes that encompassing everything from farcical to the poignant. Their settings range from a sanitarium to the Vatican itself, their diverse protagonists from two very bratty little boys to a quarreling couple who address the camera directly. The players include Ugo Tognazzi, best remembered now for his turn in the original LA CAGE AUX FOLLES movies; French actress Annie Girardot, who'd endeared herself to Italian audiences a few years earlier as the doomed, unforgettable Nadia in Luchino Visconti's ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS; Romolo Valli, who'd also play memorable roles for Bernardo Bertolucci, Joseph Losey, Vittorio De Sica, Roger Vadim and Sergio Leone; and Italian sexpot Scilla Gabel, who for a while was almost as famous a Eurobabe as Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot. This eccentric, entertaining compendium of linked narrative and moral ideas boasts frequently striking black-and-white imagery. - Dennis Harvey