Slapstick on the Tiber

The lavish ($6,500,000) production of MGM's supercolossal Quo Vadis, which was filmed with the help of 30,000 extras along the banks of the Tiber, amused some Italian onlookers almost as much as it impressed others. Last week in Rome, the Industrie Cinematografiche Sociali finished a good-humored satire called O.K. Nerone (rhymes with Peron-eh), a slapstick take-off on Quo Vadis in particular and extravagant U.S. movie spectacles in general.

Filmed among the neoclassic marble buildings built by Mussolini for a world's fair that never came off, Nerone centers on two sightseeing U.S. sailors who are knocked unconscious by thugs, carried back to a dream world of Nero's Rome. For the rest of the picture they caper happily through bosomy bedroom scenes, run afoul of a fleshy Nero, are finally thrown into the arena where they organize the gladiators for a rousing game of American-style football. Sample scene: Nero's seductive wife Poppaea (played by Italy's top pin-up girl Silvana Pampanini) lolling in a vast Roman bath, clad in a flesh-colored bathing suit.

O.K. Nerone is scheduled for release next fall--just after the opening of Quo Vadis, so that Italian audiences can have their cake and eat it, too.

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