DECAMERON NIGHTS

UK, 1952, 94 minutes, Colour.
Louis Jourdan, Joan Fontaine, Binnie Barnes, Joan Collins, Godfrey Tearle, Eliot Makeham, Noel Purcell.
Directed by Hugo Fregonese.

The Decameron Nights is a bright, colourful costume drama of the early '50s. A period piece, set in Renaissance Italy, it purports to show a portrait of the storyteller and poet Boccaccio and his telling of his bawdy tales. The treatment is very light and mildly suggestive - especially in comparison with Pasolini's more stylised and frank version of 20 years later.

Louis Jourdan is Boccaccio and several of the characters in his stories. Joan Fontaine is the demure heroine as well as the vigorous heroine of several of the stories. A very young Joan Collins appears amongst the supporting cast.

While the film is only mildly risque, it makes the point about virtue taking itself too seriously asking to be ridiculed. A Reader's Digest style Boccaccio.

1. Pleasing costume drama of the early '50s? The treatment of Boccaccio and his tales? Comparisons with later versions?

2. Risque and bawdy themes? Virtue asking to be ridiculed? A '50s treatment?

3. Sets and costumes, colour design, the musical score?

4. The adaptation of the stories, the risque and the mild treatment, the moralising?

5. Boccaccio coming to Florence, under siege, the countess taking him to Fiammetta, his telling the stories, promising not to float, flirting, telling the stories, listening to Fiammetta's moralising?

6. Fiammetta as prim, her mourning, her conditions for Boccaccio, listening to his stories, disapproving, her own story, her demands of him, inviting him to stay?

7. The countess, the other women in Fiammetta's company? Their way of life, listening to the stories? Becoming characters in the stories?

8. The story of the wife, the old husband, his being cuckolded, the pirate and his stealing? The amoral tone of the story?

9. The second story, as told by Fiammetta: Giulio, his wager with the elderly husband, the maid letting him in, the virtuous wife, the husband arranging for her to be killed, her pleading with the comic assassins, her being sold, the sultan, meeting Giulio again, arranging for his unmasking, virtue as its own reward?

10. The final story with the doctor, her cure for the king, the advice of the priest, wanting to marry, Don Bertando, his leaving her, living a wild life in Florence, the mother and her daughter, the substitution of the wife, the baby, his deciding to stay? Fiammetta's reaction to this story?

11. The overall effect of the stories? The moralising? The ending with Boccaccio staying with Fiammetta?