This was a cool movie. It almost seemed like a dream to me than a movie. It really doesn't warrant and X rating or even adult rating. I would say its a R rating at best. Sydne Rome was pretty much nude the entire movie, and she was stunningly beautiful back in 1972 so that was a definite plus in my book. Marcello Mastroianni thoroughly convinced me during the movie. I felt disgusted by him. From the bites on his legs to his pimp past, he did an awesome job acting in this movie. The entire time I was lost and laughing so the movie did its job. I was saying What? the entire time! Loved it! Because of this movie, I am compelled to watch more of Roman Polaski films. Oh and Hugh Griffith is in this movie too, so that deserves a star on its own!

Even though I knew this film was an early-ish Roman Polanski I still wasn't prepared for the overt stamp of perversion running through it. Unlike Knife in the Water and some of the other subtitled films I have seen of his, this has none of the beauty that I know he is capable of. This film is just appalling. This is probably because it is not just directed by him but written and produced also. It's a shame that we have his thoughts directed on celluloid as his thoughts are the worst thing about him - cue a very perverted film.I watched this in 2014 and it looked like it was made in the seventies, not sure if shortly after the US Government tried to deport him but they should have based on this film alone. So how can I explain the story? Wide-eyed, beautiful blonde walks around an Amalfi villa half-naked for two and a half hours saying and doing the dumbest **** that I have ever seen on celluloid? No wait, Dumb and Dumber just beat her but hey, that's a spoof on stupidity, this sadly isn't. To be honest, I am embarrassed to be a woman and to watch this all the way through. My toes were curling and I am no sandal-wearing feminist, I just baulk at watching a woman being submissively whipped during sex and then telling her abuser she loves him.To sum this up, the script could have been written by a teenager and some of the one-liners in it (some by Mr Polanski) are truly truly cringe worthy. I would recommend this film if I thought you could glean any film-making tips from it but this is no Tess or The Pianist. I think Mr Polanski had so many other things on his mind when making this film he forgot how to direct it. I didn't recognise any of his craftsmanship which is why I hired it in the first place. In keeping with Bitter Moon which was also another turkey, avoid this film if you actually want some substance to your main character and some depth to the story.

A miserable sex "comedy." It's plot-less (the idiotic IMDb spell checker insists on the hyphen in "plot-less"), endless, and painfully dated -- though it's hard to believe it was remotely funny even in 1972. "What?" is a pathetic soft-porn version of "Alice in Wonderland" that fails as both parody and comedy. It's sad to see Marcello Mastroianni wallowing in this mess.This is Polanski's worst film by a wide margin. It makes "Pirates" look like "Seven Samurai." (This is not intended as an endorsement of "Pirates," which is eminently mediocre by normal standards.)2/10. Ghastly.

The parallel between the story of "What?" and "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Caroll is very interesting, and maybe this film is the most precise adaptation of Caroll's crazy story, precisely because it really shows all the sexual content of Alice's dream trip. The movie construction reminds the "passage" of Alice "behind the mirror": she escapes the cruel world (the rapists) when she goes down to the "loonies house". Mastroianni's pimp character reminds of the Mad Hatter, because he keeps asking Sydne Rome if she wants to have tea with him around five o'clock. Polanski's character can also be seen as the Mad Hatter sidekick in the book: he keeps fighting with Mastroianni all day long, as if it was some kind of game between them. Polanski is very funny as a nervous "little guy" with a splendid mustache! At the same time he was shooting "What?" in Italy, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey shot "Flesh for Dracula" nearby, and that explains Polanski's apparition with mustache in a scene of this film. Of course, the "sexual innocence" of Sydne Rome put the film on the rank of "erotic fantasy". The tribute to "Alice" is clear, but it seems that the film may have influenced a great Italian erotic illustrator, Milo Manara, whose sexy heroins really look like Sydne Rome, and are often place in similarly "unvolontary" sexual situations (oooh, the pooor girl lost her clothes, what a shame!). Anyway, this is a crazy absurd funny and sexy film, that never takes itself seriously (at the end, Rome yells to Mastroianni: "Don't worry, this is only a film!")with a very colorful and "sunny" atmosphere.