L'amore difficile (1962)

Bachelor Antonio, a middle-aged man with an intellectual air who considers himself irresistible, is woken late in the morning by his cleaning woman. He quickly pays her wages to get rid of her, since he still has to prepare for a few conquests in the early afternoon. His first girl is Valeria, who wants to go to the seaside with him, though that does not really fit into his plans. The second woman is Bruna, who turns up at his home. He has called her and believes she wants to sleep with him only because he is so wonderful. But she sets the rules and makes it clear that this affair is a kind of farewell sex, since she is getting married in two days. The self-proclaimed ladies’ man ultimately fails against the self-determined women of the modern age, whom he had previously believed he could control and dominate. The day began for Antonio with disappointment and a refused kiss; it ends with a stinging slap in the face … Lawyer Tullio Monari is the epitome of the spiritually empty, miserly would-be seducer: a prosperous bourgeois whose sole aims are wealth and success. His values are based entirely on superficiality and sensual pleasure. Acting on behalf of his client, de Gasperi, he is supposed to sue an insurance company. When he meets de Gasperi’s wife, Elena, he carefully weighs the possibilities for starting an affair. On the one hand, he presents himself as a conceited daredevil and conqueror, but ultimately proves not brave enough to respond appropriately to the mutual advances between himself and Elena, whose marriage has become strained. When Tullio discovers that his client is not only a compulsive gambler but also effectively broke, the whole affair no longer makes sense to the lawyer, and he ends it before this passionate affair could prove very costly to him … Hans and Hilde Brenner, a German couple from Cologne in “the prime of life,” are touring Italy and plan to spend their holiday in Sicily by car. While Professor Brenner is chiefly enthusiastic about the ancient archaeological sites, his wife, who feels neglected, increasingly gives herself over to her erotic needs through fantasies. During a nighttime drive into a remote area, Brenner’s car promptly breaks down. Just then, a small truck carrying two young Italians comes along and offers help. Since the truck drivers have only one seat left, they take Hilde with them to fetch a tow truck. She squeezes in between the two men in the cab. But Hilde’s desire for much more is disappointed: her fantasy does not become reality. Out of that disappointment grows anger, culminating in the frustrated wife claiming that the two men raped her. Only then does Hans wake up and understand what is going on with his wife … An ordinary soldier sits in his compartment, half-dozing. The heat is intense, and he can hardly perceive things clearly. When a young, attractive woman gets into his compartment, he suddenly becomes wide awake. She is dressed in black and gives the uniformed man the impression that she is a widow. The woman sits right next to the soldier, which he takes as a sign that he should try to make a move on the supposed widow. He finds it very difficult to resist her effect on him. When he touches her as if by accident and she neither recoils nor complains about his behavior, he grows bolder and tentatively begins to seduce the beauty in black, little by little. Soon he becomes increasingly brazen, until the widow’s little daughter appears, and the two of them leave the compartment. In the end, the soldier stands alone on the tracks of a desolate small-town station as the widow rides away on the train …