In an attempt to turn away from the more experimental direction of his late 1960s work and create a “popular cinema,” Pasolini turned to the beloved collection of alternately bawdy and tender tales of star-crossed lovers, randy nuns and pedophile pickpockets written by Boccaccio in the fourteenth century. The result is one of the director’s most accessible films, filled with early Renaissance imagery, plentiful nudity and earthy eroticism. While Boccaccio used a range of different narrators to tell each story of romantic attachments and ribald misadventures, Pasolini replaces this framing device with a series of brief interludes featuring himself as a Giottoesque painter. To Pasolini’s dismay, the film’s international popularity inspired a number of soft-core imitations.