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By BOSLEY CROWTHER Published: June 29, 1965

NOT every Italian vignette movie can be a "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," as is dolefully demonstrated by "Bambole" (The Dolls), which opened yesterday at the Embassy and the Baronet. This four-episode collection boasts the presence of four enticing dolls — , , Monica Vitti and Elke Sommer—engaged vis-à-vis various actors in situations agitated by desire, mostly of the usual, lustful nature. And that is all it can boast.

In the first episode, Miss Lisi is a wife who spends so much time on the phone talking to her mother that her impatient husband, played by Nino Manfredi, finally sneaks out and goes to visit the little cupcake who sun herself on the terrace across the way. That is all there is to it. At best, it's a blackout bit.

In the second, Miss Sommer is a student of eugenics bouncing studiously around looking for the perfect male specimen to be the father of her child, and what she finally settles for is her ardent chauffeur (Piero Focaccia), an Italian Jerry Lewis.

The third is moderately amusing, primarily because it is a straight lampoon of deep- breathing, kitchen-sink drama. Miss Vitti is the faithless wife of a middle-aged, unromantic laborer whom she tries in various ways to have bumped off so she can be with her Marion Brando-type of lover (Orazio Orlando). But the unobliging husband keeps popping up.

And the fourth is a dismal disquisition on female cupidity in which Miss Lollobrigida seduces the secretary of a monsignor by conning the gullible prelate into throwing the young man her way. Akim Tamiroff rants and grunts as the monsignor and Jean Sorel is the colorless young man.

Wit, which is of the essence in the sort of farce that these pretend to be, is sadly and yawningly absent, and all we get in these four episodes is a lot of seductive posturing by the ladies. Some customers may settle for that, because no matter how empty may seem their noggins, these ladies are all firmly and fully packed.