This is the Dubbed In English Edited Version. As a womanising aristocrat who falls prey to a hopeless love, Terence Stamp bears an eerie resemblance to Boldini's portrait of Robert de Montesquiou, the real-life model for Marcel Proust's doomed aesthete the Baron de Charlus. The story too unfolds along Proustian lines. Meeting a 'respectable' middle-class girl (Laura Antonelli) and her none-too-bright fiance (Michele Placido) Stamp loses his heart - only to learn she is really a high-class prostitute.
This being an Italian film, his growing obsession takes on a darker and more melodramatic tone than anything in Proust. Stamp makes an abortive bid to poison his lady-love, infiltrates her brothel as an anonymous client and manoeuvres her into a twisted sexual triangle with his unsavoury, Fascist-sympathising cousin (Marcello Mastroianni). As we may expect, the emotional decadence of these three characters mirrors the political decay of Italy itself. The final orgy concludes with a group of jaded voluptuaries drunkenly singing 'Giovinezza!' - the anthem of Mussolini's blackshirts
