Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

markwood272 Saw this beautifully preserved/restored print, with subtitles, via YouTube. Pasolini, with his reputation for political and every other form of radicalism, seems inhibited here, even in the discussion segments with Alberto Moravia and Cesare Musatti. The man-and-woman (and children, students)-in-the-street-and-on-the-farm interviews seem dated, probably since the interviews were conducted on the cusp of major changes in marital and family laws, policies, sexual attitudes in Italy and elsewhere. While no groundbreaking documentary, it's still a fascinating document of the time and place. A more daring and cinematically imaginative treatment of similar themes is found in, of course, "I am Curious (Yellow)"(1967) and "I am Curious(Blue)"(1968), directed by Vilgot Sjoman (a former UCLA film student). In those days there were things you could do in Sweden, albeit with censorship problems, that were simply impossible in Italy, period.

AvBaur In this documentary, Pasolini travels around Italy and interviews random people in public places about their attitudes towards sexuality, marriage, and gender issues. It's fascinating to hear how Italians in the early 1960s felt about these topics, and there are plenty of opinions that seem shocking from a modern perspective. There are people who think that divorce should be illegal (they'd rather have spouses kill each other), parents who find it perfectly normal for 14 year-old boys to lose their virginity with a prostitute, and women who think it's only right that they have less rights and freedoms than men. It's especially interesting to hear the interviewees confess their unabashed disgust towards homosexuals to the secretly gay director.However, I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't have been more interesting to include some interviews that weren't conducted in public places with groups of people standing around. As it stands, the movie gets a bit repetitive after a while and probably would have been more effective with a shorter running time.

Michael_Elliott Comizi d'amore (1965) *** (out of 4) Pasolini travels around Italy throwing a mic into various ranges of people asking frank and honest questions about sexuality. Various topics ranging from homosexuality, prostitutes, divorce, sexual freedom and even asking kids where babies come from. The type of people range from college students to the rich and poor and to women who normally can't speak openly. I'm sure this film was more of a sensation when originally released but I think it holds up quite well today for several reasons. For one, it's interesting to look back over forty-years ago and see how young people at the times thought about sex but also how the older people back then looked back on the moral and religious rules of their youth. The film also holds up well today because things really haven't changed too much whenever you really break down the groups of people like Pasolini did. I'm not sure is there was a point to this documentary as it seems like the director simply wanted to know what the country felt on certain issues. There's a lot of humor to be found in the film but most of this comes from the answers the children give about where babies come from. The most interesting thing, knowing that the director was gay, is him asking people about homosexuality and the answers they give him. Most people reply with disgust and I kept wondering if the director would crack and say something but he never does. I think the film goes on a bit too long but it's an interesting look at sexuality on moral and religious aspects.

kadar I too was disappointed, but not for the reasons cited in the previous comment.Instead, I found the film very hard to follow, with lots of academic buzzwords (interviewer Pasolini refers to "the sex problem" at least 20 times), not all of it subtitled, and subtitles that faded out of legibility against light backgrounds. The movie was visually unappetizing, in part because of inconsistent and often inept camera work, and in part because of a sloppy transfer to tape that washed out the middle tones and often made it hard to see and read people's faces.The most annoying element was the recurrent muting of the voice tracks (and of course the accompanying sub-titles) that was labeled "self-censorship." Was this a comment on official censorship of the time? I get the impression that the most interesting answers were lost to the audience through this process.An interesting and meaty idea from a provocative and often great filmmaker, undercut by directorial inexperience and poor repackaging.