Vedo nudo (I See Naked). 1969. Italy. Directed by Dino Risi. Screeplay by Dino Risi, Fabio Carpi, Jaja Fiastri, Ruggero Maccari, Bernadino Zapponi. With Nino Manfredi, Syla Koscina. In Italian; English subtitles. 114 min.
This gentle sex comedy is told in seven episodes, all of them starring Nino Manfredi in various overheated roles, from a train fetishist to a man accused of deflowering a hen (a cinematic indignity Gene Wilder and Woody Allen would inflict on a sheep three years later). “The audience wants to see pretty girls and a comic number,” Risi would later observe. “It’s all you need to fill an evening. It would have been easy to let ourselves go following this model, but I think we avoided vulgarity in the film…. Vedo nudo tries to play sex down to some extent. Films of this kind also have a ‘moralizing’ function. The more freedom of movement you give to sex, the more socially useful it is, because in this way the public shake off their obsessions in a fairly natural way.” New 35mm print courtesy Luce Cinecittà.