La farce tragique

As an evocation of the Italian Renaissance, this is a film so visually sumptuous that its only rival is Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. Its drama, though, is less in the poetic vein of Shakespeare and more in the trashy blood-and-thunder style of the Jacobean playwrights. A dizzying brew of lust, sadism and obsessive (no, more like psychotic) revenge, La Cena delle Beffe was a predictable shock to the straight-laced censors in Mussolini's Italy.

Most of their horror was reserved for the graphic near-rape of the lading lady, Clara Calamai, cast convincingly enough as an amoral courtesan in 16th century Florence. Glimpse the first shot of naked breasts in the Italian sound cinema, as the lusty but none-too-bright Neri (Amedeo Nazzari) seizes her by force from the brainy but reptilian Giannetto (Osvaldo Valenti). The loser, of course, wreaks a brutal revenge. He has Neri declared mad, bound up and tortured by a parade of cast-off mistresses and cuckolded husbands.

This tale becomes all the more chilling once we realise that Valenti - whose performance here makes Laurence Olivier as Richard III look like a Boy Scout - was allegedly a notorious Fascist in his off-screen life. He and his wife Luisa Ferida, who plays a small role as one of the ex-mistresses, were among the lunatic fringe accused of collaborating with Il Duce for his last blood-soaked stand in the Republic of Salo. Come the Liberation, the couple were gunned down by left-wing Partisans.

Never mind. La Cena delle Beffe is just a movie... Or is it?