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A PERFECT COMEDY ... that's full of comedy episodes ...
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/09/23
Full Review
Audience Member
When you think of 60s italian directors you think Fellini or Antonioni or Visconti, and often Dino Riso is, at least internationally, forgotten. I had only seen one of his films, 1962's "Il Sorpasso", which was, quite simply, a masterpiece, and one which I strongly recommend to anyone. "Vedo Nudo" is more on the "italian comedy" tradition for which the director was also famous for, and presents 7 sketches about love, sex, obsessions and fetichs in a matter of fact and light humor way, most of them with Nino Manfredi on the lead role. This must have been, off course, a major influence on Woody Allen's "Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask" (1972), but unfortunately ends up being a very unbalanced movie. The largest chapters (about half an hour), are the worse and stall a little of the style of the movie, but the director seems aware of that, because, for example, after "Ornella", one of those long chapters, what follows are two quick very amusing ones that balance the movie back together. So the movie floats in these two states, between episodes with more interesting ideas but which end too quickly (or rather have the perfect enough timing), and other, lengthier, which dwell on the same idea more than they should, trying to construct something of a short-film about it but ultimately destroying the flow of the film. So we get "La Diva" in which a famous and beautiful movie star (Sylva Koscina as herself) drops a man who has just suffered an accident at an hospital, and becomes so much the center of attention that the man is left to die alone in the emergency room. In "Processo a Porte Chiuse" we get a man on trial for having an affair with a chicken (Gene Wilder's love affair with a sheep in Allen's film comes to mind). "Ornella" is the longest and worse segment, in which a man who likes to dress has a woman suddenly receives the visit of another man with whom he had been corresponding (as a woman), and so pretends to be the nonexistent woman's brother. The idea is interesting but is stretched for too long. "Il Guardone" of 2 or 3 minutes length quickly follows to pick up the pace, with a short sighted man who appears to be watching a naked woman on the opposite window that turns out to be something else entirely... In "L'ultima Vergin", perhaps the best segment, a woman thinks the man installing a new telephone line in her house is a well known serial sex killer. In "Motrice Mia" a thrill seeking man is hooked on lying on the tracks under passing trains, taking sexual pleasure out of it. Lastly, the segment which gives the title to the film, a womanizer suddenly starts to see naked woman everywhere. Here again, in the second longest segment, the idea is stretched until it becomes almost unbearable, with his obsession, his treatment at a clinic and then the nice little ending twist. All in all "Vedo Nudo" is a product of the 60s liberalism and sex openness in movie making. The segments present a light humor which goes down well, but are really never that funny nor that interesting. It is filled with nice little details that end too quickly, and segments that go on forever, but at any rate it is watchable and flows nicely, but it does not give much more than that.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/31/23
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