Kolmastoista tuoli

A very weak version of a rather archaic story by Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov from 1928. A group of European filmmakers invited Sharon Tate, a rising American starlet, who was the type not to worry too much about anything. She won beauty contests, and posed for Playboy. She arrived on the set pregnant, shot the sexy scenes first, and that was that. It's kind of a silly affair, where a long-haired blonde runs from place to place and nobody bothers much with the plot. Sharon's partner Vittorio Gassman is basically not worth commenting on. For fans of Orson Welles, there's at least a little theatrical fun here; for devotees of de Sica, it's just another entry in his leftover films. The fact that Sharon Tate was brutally murdered when she was eight months pregnant after returning from filming cannot change the rating of the entire endeavor. Coincidentally, a similarly weak European film was made a few years later by her then-husband Roman Polanski under the title What? (1972). (25.07.2020)