The recently rediscovered vocal version by Florinda Bolkan of the Ennio Morricone’s classic is a sensual invitation to share the dinner table and perhaps more. Discover the sonic manifesto of Italian avant-garde cinema.

Is there anything more identifiable of that Italian, bourgeois and decadent glamour of the late 1960s than a designer table – modernist, made of steel and smoky glass surfaces – around which, dish after dish, champagne, jellies and debauchery are served?  

Most likely not. And that precisely is the ingredient that makes Metti una a sera a cena, the 1969 film directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, a gem of Italian cinema that keeps fascinating us, watch after watch.

The table is indeed the fulcrum of the story, a piece of Italian radical (chic) design around which trajectories of lust, love and psychological deviance revolve. 

It never was a blockbuster, nor an underground extravaganza. But a bourgeoisie drama, with thrilling and erotic hints, and therefore also political.

To underpin this tension is the music by Ennio Morricone, but also the hidden hand of a young Dario Argento, yet to become the king of Giallo, and here in the role of screenwriter. As the soundtrack reaches its crescendo, the bourgeois tedium of the characters at play explodes behind closed doors into something forbidden, according to public morality: a threesome, in which homoeroticism is only fleetingly revealed through the subtle but passionate movements of the hands.

It is no coincidence that the film’s producer was the visionary Marina Cicogna, scout (and lover) of one of the film’s main characters: Florinda Bolkan. The Brazilian actress and model who became a landmark of Italian cinema, both avant-garde and softcore, at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, but also a chanteuse.

Bolkan was all over the promotional material of the film, including the poster and the artwork for the Ennio Morricone-composed score. Lounging in her dress by the Mayer atelier (furs by Fendi also make an appearance), sensually pinned on the side only by a series of golden hoops, she became the embodiment of the sophistication of Morricone, but also of the languid charge of its main theme.

A bossa nova that seemed to capture the wealth and charme of the Italian bourgeoisie in all of its exuberance at the turn of the decade, in that liminal time between the sexual playfulness of the Swinging London and the radicalisation of social life of the soon-to-be Years of Lead.

Emancipation, food and design: perhaps these are the keys that make Metti una sera a cena a film that keeps fascinating us, one that remains a benchmark of the Italian taste in matters of style and a manifesto of its intellectuals, like Patroni Griffi. His are the lyrics to the vocal version of Morricone’s theme, of which two versions exist: one interpreted by Florinda Bolkan and one by Milva.

Whether we may spend hours – sat around a dinner table, ça va sans dire – to discuss which version of the song is the best. What cannot be questioned, however, is its enigmatic voluptuousness, capable of sketching like no others that season of Italian culture.

Of all of them, the version for the voice of Florinda Bolkan, the most elusive both in the scarcity of the original phonographic support and in the interpretation, is the one that has been most preserved by time, coming down to us like a gem still precious and untouched, as only rare archival finds can be. 

The track, originally released as a 45 rpm by DET, a subsidiary of CAM Sugar, has now been brought back to life from the original archive tapes, embellishing the Morricone Segreto Songbook, a collection that allows us to discover one of the most secret sides of the Maestro’s vocal repertoire.

“Metti una sera a cena” by Ennio Morricone featuring vocals by Florinda Bolkan and I Cantori moderni di Alessandro Alessandroni is now out on all digital platforms, and on Morricone Segreto Songbook – Hidden Songs from Cinema (1962-1973), available on 2LP, CD and digital.  

Opening image: Florinda Bolkan in Metti una sera a cena, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, 1969.