Salvatore Samperi, director of a steamy mid-70s film that challenged bourgeois morality and turned actress Laura Antonelli into an erotic icon, died Thursday aged 64.
The 1973 film, Malizia (Malice), sent a frisson through Italian society and sparked the Vatican's ire with its story of Antonelli as a saucy, socially climbing maid.
Although regarded as a cultural landmark, most critics do not see Malizia as Samperi's best work.
They reserve that accolade for his 1968 debut film Grazie, Zia (Thank You, Aunt), another study of forbidden passion in the middle class.
Samperi was just 24 when he made what many see as a groundbreaking exploration of sexual hypocrisy and decadence.
Many critics dismissed Samperi's movies as smut with an intellectual veneer at the time, partly because the films were also box-office dynamite.
However, he had his share of flops too, including a late, ill-judged sequel to Malizia, made almost 20 years after the original.
In his later years Samperi worked mainly in television.
