Cattivi pensieri (1976)

User Rating:

5.9/10   

Director:

Ugo Tognazzi

Writers:

Enzo Jannacci (dialogue)
Antonio Leonviola (screenplay)

Release Date:

26 October 1976 (Italy)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

Mario Marani is a well-respected lawyer in late 70s Milano. He and his wonderful wife Francesca have an intense high social life...

Plot Keywords:

Jealousy | Brigate Rosse | Female Nudity | Terrorist | Italy

Cast

Ugo Tognazzi	...	Mario Marani
Edwige Fenech	...	Francesca Marani
Paolo Bonacelli	...	Antonio Marani
Piero Mazzarella	...	Concierge
Yanti Somer	...	Paola
Mara Venier	...	Mrs. Bocconi
Laura Bonaparte	...	Retrosi's Lover
Mircha Carven	...	Lorenzo Macchi
Pietro Brambilla	...	Duccio
Veruschka von Lehndorff	...	Mario Marani's Lover (as Veruschka)
Orazio Orlando	...	Borderò
Massimo Serato	...	Carlo Bocconi
Luc Merenda	...	Jean-Luc Retrosi
Mario Bernardi
Egidio Casolari

Also Known As:

Evil Thoughts
Who Mislaid My Wife?

Runtime:

105 min | France:60 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Telecolor)

Certification:

Italy:VM14 | UK:18

Filming Locations:

Madonna di Campiglio, Trento, Trentino - Alto Adige, Italy

Company:

New Film Production S.r.l.

Trivia:

Italian censorship visa # 69250 delivered on 20-10-1976.

Movie Connections:

References The Ladykillers (1955)

Pretty clever comedy actually, not well served by the English dubbing

There are really two kinds of 1970's Italian sex comedies. There are the really silly ones featuring the buffoonery of actors like Lino Banfi and Alvaro Vitali, which are the ones actress Edwige Fenech usually appeared in. Then there are the darker and/or more satirical ones like Lucio Fulci's "The Eroticist", Salvatore Samper's "Malizia", and "Romanzo Popolare", a film very similar to this that also featured lead actor/director UgoTognazzi. These latter films were a little more arty and usually tended to feature actresses like Laura Antonelli or Ornella Muti. Whether arty or silly, however, almost all of the 1970's comedies were horribly dubbed into English and given stupid, often inappropriate titles (like "Who Mislaid My Wife?") This didn't really hurt the ones that were already silly to begin with, but it definitely does in the darker, more clever ones like this.

A lawyer (Ugo Tognazzi) comes home from a cancelled business trip to find the naked feet of a man standing in his closet. He suspects the man is the lover of his wife (Edwige Fenech), but instead of confronting her, he locks the closet door, turns up the heat, and drags her out of town on an extended working vacation, playing a kind game of "chicken" with her to get her to admit to the presence of the man in the closet. This is indeed a pretty ridiculous conceit, but this IS still a comedy after all (and it's really no more ridiculous than Alvaro Vitali playing a high school student in all Fenech's "Schoolteacher" sex comedies). As they travel around Italy, the lawyer begins to imagine who the mysterious man in the closet might be. He has vivid fantasies of his wife's adulterous affairs and possible lovers. He also has darker fantasies (or "evil thoughts") about returning to the apartment and finding the dead body of the "lover".

I won't give away the ending, but it's quite clever with some nice ironic twists. Of course, Fenech has her usual plethora of nude scenes. This actually might be the most explicit film she ever appeared in—in one of the fantasy sequences she goes for a full-frontal nude swim with a bunch of guys with giant erections, in another she gets turned on watching graphic scenes of horses mating. Still the movie, while very dark in its humor, was in generally good taste and I didn't think Fenech was "demeaned" at all. As for Tognazzi, he basically plays a bourgeois version of the working-class guy he played in "Romanzo Popolare". Here he's married to Fenech, and in that he was married to the equally incredibly gorgeous (if somewhat younger) Ornella Muti. Either of these situations would probably drive just about any man mad with jealousy!