A summit meeting of great Italian directors of the era, Boccaccio '70 is an antipasto platter of vintage sex symbols and naughty material starring Sophia Loren (Yesterday Today & Tomorrow), Anita Ekberg (La Dolce Vita) & Romy Schneider (The Trial). Cooked up and bankrolled by Carlo Ponti and American producer Joseph E. Levine, the four-part film was meant to tap the international smash of Fellini's La Dolce Vita, which gave audiences some refreshingly, you know, "mature" subject matter. Four directors were hired to create segments ostensibly based on the tales of Boccaccio: Federico Fellini (in the lull between La Dolce Vita and 8-1/2), Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, and Mario Monicelli.

With four of Italy's master directors at the helm, these short works feature an extraordinary cast of screen sirens in some unabashedly steamy situations. With a light, humorous treatment, the sexual mores of the time are explored in the manner of an updated Boccaccio. "The Temptation of Doctor Antonio," directed by Federico Fellini (LA DOLCE VITA, 8 1/2), features Anita Ekberg as a sexy billboard ad come to life to torment a prudish censor (Peppino De Filippo). In Luchino Visconti's (THE LEOPARD) film, Romy Schneider (WHAT'S NEW, PUSSYCAT) is the wife of a philanderer (Thomas Milian, ALMOST HUMAN, TRAFFIC), who uses their money to visit prostitutes. Realizing his duplicity, she extracts her revenge in this subtle, stylish meditation on marriage and fidelity. Sophia Loren (YESTERDAY, TODAY, & TOMORROW, TWO WOMEN) stars in Vittorio de Sica's (THE BICYCLE THIEF, MIRACLE IN MILAN) "The Raffle." She plays a woman who offers herself as a prize to the best shot in a shooting gallery, which garners some unsettling results. Finally, Mario Minicelli's segment "Renzo & Luciana" is presented here for an American audience for the first time; it presents a rather sober though affecting view of a young couple constrained by their poverty and social position.