#528

I stumbled accross -and over- there on the Reuters feed.
How can any prosecutor state they will start a criminal investigation? It can hardly be on the basis of article 528 of the Italian penal code.
Shome mishtake shurely?
Ever seen 'Le Bambole' starring the ever lovely and talented photographer Gina Lollobrigida? Let's take a giant seven league boot strut into time back to 1965. Well, it got political, some people polished up on their grovelling and tried their hand at censorship. For the full story read the Time article of those days.
A reviewer summed it up neatly: "If the shock's gone much of the interest's gone. What remains is an interesting document of morals in the mid 1960s."

A few decades later some tried it from a different angle. Corrupting those young Italian adolescents using those lewd dens of depravity mascarading as libraries eh? You foul depraved libertine librarians!
Back to the present and sanity. So let us consider the facts and just take a look at the penal article i.s. (fish out the general idea implicated in a larger viewing scope from this outdated 1994 UN Document

So how far can this be streched? How can an act from 1948 be enforced today in the sense it was 20 or even 40 years ago? I can hardly fathom Italian society has not evolved? Proof? Ilona Staller (a.k.a. La Cicciolina) got elected to parlement in 1987.
In the UN paper 91(a) can only be reinforced if it could cause potential harm to the sense or moral values.
(Ok... Let's play a game: Name ten movies that can corrupt your child (post 1948). Here's a small list to start you off:
A Clockwork Orange, Blow Up, The Exorcist, Bad Luitenant, Reservoir Dogs, The Matrix,..)

Or intice people to become involved in corruption (We are talking the land of Mr Berlusconi here!) or commit crimes or suicide (well, it did have some pretty bad acting in it at times but it wasn't THAT bad...).

Based on this I would suggest the plaintiffs would only go for the angle of it being 'religious corruptive'. The other traits are hardly tangible and would be thrown out by any judge with a bit of sense betwixt their ears or even a sultana for a brain (unless they've seen the movie as in the plaintiffs claim, implicating the judge is already corrupt thus proving their own point and probably finding the outruling biassed or influenced and screaming blue murder they will never get a fair judge to hear the case).

So some prosecutor in Italy is dancing to the ancient tune of religious groups with censoring causes groaping for a number 528. Against common indecent exposal? (no) sexual morality? (no).

"A complaint against the film was filed by a group of clergy near the Italian village of Civitavecchia"
Hmm. Civitavecchia clergy. It must be the Franciscans in the monastery then. It can harly be the Buddhist monks there?

Luckely I was wearing my corset or I believe my sides would have split. Read on.
"Asked why the case was being opened now, some 13 months after the film debuted at last year's Cannes Film Festival, an official at the Civitavecchia state prosecutor's office said he wasn't sure. "I don't know," the official told Reuters. "Maybe they [the clergy who brought the complaint] have just seen the film."
Tee hee. Maybe they have been saving for the 2 Disk Special Edition DVD Box. And it has only arrived earlier this year. You know how Amazon can be such a drag if you don't tick the Express box to complete your order.

So they must have missed out on the whole ruse earlier. The book appearing in 2003 and that cardinal Bertone telling people "to shun it like rotten food" two years later in 2005.