Lattuada’s episode, placed at the conclusion of the film, as a “comic finale” (…) was greeted with plenty of press coverage – “pages which actually record dilettante experiences of cineguf [university film clubs of the fascist period]” (Guido Aristarco, Cinema Nuovo, no. 27), or with actual moralistic disdain: “crude excitation” (Vito Pandolfi, La Rivista del Cinema Italiano, no. 2), “bad taste”, “phallic music” (this refers to the instrument known as the ”marranzano”, which the composer, Mario Nascimbene, had already used for Michele Gandin’s documentary Cristo non si è fermato a Eboli), charges of complicity by the “authorities” which “permit the public exhibition of films like this” (Nino Ghelli, Bianco e Nero, no. 12, 1953). It was the first time that the critics found themselves faced with, so to speak, “erotic” sequences, presented purely by themselves, without the warning of a social denunciation, without social satire, and without recourse to the jesters of a theatre variety show. The fact that a “serious” artist like Lattuada had directed them made them uneasy, wrong-footed.

Callisto Cosulich, Alberto Lattuada (Gremese, 1985)