The Magnificent Cuckold

1964
November 9, 2017

The Magnificent Cuckold is about a hat tycoon who is ecstatically, if not hungrily, in love with his youthful wife. It is all blissful, that is, until our man, middle-aged and somewhat of a square among his blasé, upper-class friends to whom cuckoldry is a common practice, is seduced by one of them. At this point doubts and suspicions, like conscience, begin to plague him. If he could succumb to extramarital confections, why not his […]

The English Patient

1996

Beginning in the 1930s, “The English Patient” tells the story of Count Almásy who is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics that is later revealed in a series of flashbacks while Almásy is on his death bed after being horribly burned […]

The Oldest Profession (aka Le plus vieux métier du monde)

1967

A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages. 1) “The Prehistoric Era”: A caveman discovers that a cavewoman is more attractive when cave paint is applied to her face. And she can earn more seashells that way. 2) “Roman Nights”: The Emperor goes out seeking a little nocturnal amusement, only to find that the high-priced, Oriental courtesan he hires is his wife, the Empress. 3) “Mademoiselle Mimi”: In revolutionary France, Mimi finds that her […]

Black Angel

2002
November 7, 2017

March 1945 Asolo, Italy. Livia Mazzion, the attractive wife of a top ministry official, slips into the car of lawyer Ugo Oggiano, Livia’s admirer and her husband’s informer. Livia must reach Venice and her lover Helmut Schultz, a Wermacht lieutenant, as beautiful and accursed as a pagan god, with whom she is having a burning love affair. During the trip she relives the high points of her devastati