The Key Blu-Ray

Tinto Brass’s first major film since the notorious Caligula stars Frank Finlay as a man who is terrified of losing his voluptuous wife Teresa (Stefania Sandrelli) because he is unable to satisfy her sexually. He arranges for her to have an affair, by taking erotic photographs of her and asking her would-be lover to develop them. Meanwhile, he keeps abreast of her burgeoning relationship by reading her diary, in the full knowledge that she in turn is reading his…

One of Brass’s most critically acclaimed films, The Key is also one of his most elegant, with wintry Venetian locations, a beautiful Ennio Morricone score and a strong sense of period – it’s set in 1940, just before Mussolini’s Italy entered World War II.

However, it also unmistakably shows the path that Brass would eventually follow, with startlingly graphic sex scenes for a supposedly ‘respectable’ film cast with serious actors.