Il bluray segnalato da @ilbestione contiene due versioni del film, il cut italiano ed il cut internazionale. A quanto pare la durate è la medesima ma le due versioni differiscono per la scelta di alcune inquadrature. Grossomodo, secondo ciò che ho letto, il cut italiano avrebbe più inquadrature di nudo mentre quello internazionale più sequenze relative a bondage et similia.
Qui uno strlcio di un articolo trovato online:
[…] The film was picked up by Radley Metzger’s Audobon Films for distribution in the U.S. as The Libertine. Apparently, the U.S. version included some footage that Clementelli was forced to censor in Italy. I’ll talk more about the various versions below. According to IMDB, the film received an X rating upon its initial release, which is not surprising. In those early days of the new rating system, some well-regarded films (such as Medium Cool and Midnight Cowboy) received an X rating. At that point, the X rating had not been co-opted by the porn industry and was merely used to indicate that a film was intended for adults only. If rated today, I think that it would get an R (not even an NC-17).
Time reviewed the film on June 13, 1969, concluding that “This slick little bit of Italian pornography has enough brains not to take itself seriously, but lacks the wit to make it anything more than a painless put-on.”
I have also viewed a 2012 French DVD release under the film’s French title L’amour à cheval. The French DVD is of much higher quality than the U.S. DVD. It specifies a PAL running time of 99 minutes, but when you factor in an NTSC conversion, the running time would only work out to about 89 minutes. There is no significant story-line content that is different between the two versions. I have not made an exhaustive comparison, but generally speaking, the difference between the two versions is that the French version has a little more nudity than the U.S. version, and the U.S. version has more of the bondage/rough stuff than the French version, although there are exceptions to both of those assertions. My presumption is that the French version is very similar to the Italian theatrical version, which would generally align them with the press accounts of what was cut from the Italian version for the censors but was included in the U.S. release.
To be more specific, there is nudity by Catherine in the French version that is not in the U.S. version, primarily in the hotel bedroom scene with Trintignant and in the car scene where she is removing her clothes as they drive down the highway. Also, when the housekeeper’s fiancee is on the roof looking down at the sunbathing Mimi lying nude on her stomach, the French version shows a bare butt (a body double), but the U.S. version only shows her bottom covered by a towel. It’s perplexing as to why those scenes would have been trimmed for the U.S. release, resulting in very fleeting minimal topless nudity in the bedroom scene and none in the car scene. Cutting seconds from those scenes would have had no impact whatsoever on ratings or anything else.
The S&M scenes included in the U.S. release are mostly things that were included in home movie footage from Mimi’s deceased husband. With that said, the French version has a more extended scene where Mimi is slapped around and forced into sex with her dress ripped off (which is truncated significantly in the U.S. version). Much of that scene is performed by a body double. On the other hand, the U.S. version has a scene where a beetle is walking up Mimi’s stomach and across her breast (a body double), which is not in the French version. There is a scene in the film where Mimi is imagining her housekeeper being hosed down by her plumber-fiancee. In the French version, the housekeeper’s clothes get wet, but she is fully clothed at all times. In the U.S. version, her clothes are washed open so that she is briefly topless. The French DVD includes some deleted scenes, which generally reflect scenes that are in the U.S. version (as I have described), although some of the unedited raw footage shows more of how the scene was shot (e.g., with a body double for Catherine).
A me il film è piaciuto, mi sembra ben costruito e divertente, la struttura narrativa in fondo è efficace ed il tema è stuzzicante.
Montagnani così giovane ho fatto fatica a riconoscerlo, senza baffi e con gli occhiali sembra proprio un altro!