One could never accuse Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thief (1948), Umberto D (1952)) of not making enough films. If anything his prodigious output impacted on the quality of many of his movies, something which is self evident in Woman Times Seven (1967 - 1 hr, 43 min, 50 sec).

Designed as a vehicle for Shirley MacLaine, the film consists of seven short films which deal with various aspects of love. Now I quite like Maclaine as an actress, who was always willing to take a risk with her roles, but this film has to be one of the weakest things she ever did.

Partially the problem lies with the fact that the individual pieces are so short that we never actually get anything except a quick snapshot of life, certainly not enough to care about the seven characters she plays.

The better sequences like ‘Marie’ - where she stars with Alan Arkin as a pair who plan to commit suicide, not out of any great noble ideal but just because they have decided that life is basically crap - is a single idea brought to its absurd conclusion. But even here it is Arkin#s delightful portrayal as a man who is less convinced about the plan, but somehow unable to bring himself to tell MacLaine’s acerbic and angry character which makes the sequence worth watching.

The film is a veritable smorgasbord of late sixties acting talent, so as well as Maclaine, you get Peter Sellers in an odd story about a man declaring his love at a funeral; Rossano Brazzi appears in a short skit about a woman who finds that her husband has been cheating on her, and flees to the Parisian prostitutes for comfort; and Michael Caine appears as a stalker, an idea that was evidently more romantic then than it is today.

The film is presented with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and a 2.0 mono soundtrack, although the PR blurb says that the theatrical trailer is included as an extra it wasn't on the disc I received for review.

So I’m afraid that this is predominantly for fans of Maclaine or De Sica who want to complete their collections. Taken on its own merits it is a pretty weak affair.

5

Charles Packer