Excerpt from Continental Film Review, September 1970
Despite trials, prison sentences (albeit suspended) and the holding up of films (as in the case of H2S), which creates a frustrating economic problem, the Italian cinema continues to embrace a lively erotic element, sometimes justifiably within the context of a serious work, as in the Pasolini-Citti Ostia or Bertolucci’s Il coformista. Sometimes justifiably introduced but in a story that has perhaps too obviously been chosen for its erotic potential.
It’s interesting to note that the Italians have not widely adopted the sex-instructional film that is so popular in Germany and Scandanavia. Eroticism for them is still a matter of living, not of pedagogy.
Some critics have suggested that the Italian cinema is becoming a voyeur’s cinema, but the Italian’s essential concern for people and people within their environment ensures a certain contact with life which the true voyeur film has not.
