Shaking the Bedclothes

High Infidelity draws and quarters the subject of extramarital dalliance, figuratively shaking the bedclothes to uncover four zesty episodes of an Italian comedy distinguished now for lively direction, now for superior performances. Its format is a series of irregular triangles edged with homosexuality, fetishism, jealousy and greed.

In The Scandal, Hero Nino Manfredi, whose face is a blah-relief of middle-class mores, skillfully portrays a vacationing businessman who imagines an intrigue between his voluptuous young wife (Fulvia Franco) and a handsome archaeologist--until he gets a bizarre surprise. Manfredi is nearly matched by Monica Vitti, using every tic of her tragicomic trade in The Victim, an offbeat ode to a jealous wife who harangues her husband out of the house. When his best friend (Jean-Pierre Cassel) stops by, she pours out her troubles while he paws out his sympathy. Result: an orgy of absent-minded surrender.

Director Elio Petri is deft and stylish with an escapade between a svelte, sexually inhibited matron (Claire Bloom) and an ardent industrialist (Charles Aznavour). After chasing around the tycoon's sumptuous beach house, the lady reveals that her whim for today is rough stuff in a sleazy motel room--a touch of aberration that is clue to a conventional surprise ending. In the last episode, Modern People, directed with rich detail and folksy color by Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street), a cheese dealer (Ugo Tognazzi) offers his wife to a creditor in payment of his gambling losses, only to learn the high cost of cuckoldry.

Like most episodic films, High Infidelity offers variety; yet it finally lacks the consistent style and the stamp of personality that can weld four well-tooled parts into a worthwhile whole.

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