Il Gatto dagli occhi di giada / The Cat with the Eyes of Jade / The Cat's Victims / Watch Me While I Kill

[This is another piece written for the writing on film class and thus assumes less background knowledge of the giallo; any comments on whether you could understand it as a typical filmgoer welcome, along with whether it contains spoilers if you've seen / know the film.]

The 1970s were a time of considerable economic, social and political unrest within Italy. One way in which this manifested in the country’s cinema was a resurgence of interest in directly addressing the legacies of fascist and war periods, arguably not seen since the early year of neo-realism immediately after World War II.

Though this interest was manifest across both popular and art cinemas, there were noticeable differences in their approaches. Whereas art films like Bertolucci’s The Conformist and 1900 and Pasolini’s Salo often took a confrontational, less comfortable stance in presenting Italian complicity in Fascist evils, their popular counterparts more usually displaced attention onto Nazism and presented narratives of heroic Italian resistance.


Some vaguely Suspiria style lighting

Given this distinction, one of the most intriguing things about Antonio Bido’s The Cat with the Eyes of Jade is the way in which it straddles divide, using the popular form of the murder mystery thriller or giallo to expose a story of collaboration with the Nazis.

It all starts innocently enough as dancer Mara (Paola Tedesco) unwittingly stumbles upon a murder at her local chemists. In a hurry to get to work and reluctant to become involved , she thinks little more of the incident, but is then herself threatened and thus seeks the assistance of her Luca (Corrado) – a move in accord with both the wider giallo preference for amateur investigator protagonists and anti-authoritarian mistrust.

Meanwhile Luca, a recording engineer by profession, has been given a tape of a threatening phone call received by his neighbour, the loan shark Bozzi (Fernando Cerulli). He soon determines that the mixture of noises includes barking Dobermans, marching, shouting and industrial machinery, possibly an incinerator.




Classic giallo tape recorders and photographs

The two cases intersect as an associate of Bozzi’s is murdered and further inquiries uncover that both victims had served on the same jury a year earlier. It was an open and shut case, involving a career criminal by the name of Ferrante (frequent Pasolini collaborator Franco Citti) who had threatened revenge – and who escaped some two months previously.

As so often happens in the giallo what seemed to be a straightforward matter then turns out to be anything but, compelling Luca and Mara to delve ever deeper into the mystery and what one character tellingly dismisses as ancient history, best forgotten about.

There is no getting away from the fact that The Cat with the Eyes of Jade is a derivative film.

Sometimes it seems that just about every image and motif in it can be traced back to one or other of Dario Argento’s films in particular, be it the enigmatic aural and visual fragments that must be deciphered; a traumatic event thought buried in the past but which now murderously erupts into the present; the choreographing of the suspense and violence number set-pieces to propulsive jazz/prog rock freak outs; the enigmatic animal-referencing title itself, or the unsettling proliferation of possible point-of-view shots.




The littlest detail, here the position of two cups, can matter a lot

Yet much like De Palma in relation to Hitchcock, it’s hard to find fault with Bido’s logic here: If you’re going to take another filmmaker as your generic model, doesn’t it make sense to both choose the best available, for obvious reasons, and to make it obvious, forestalling any charges of plagiarism?

Indeed, the one area where Bido’s Argento-isms arguably lead him astray is his use of false point of view. In Argento’s Deep Red, the cumulative effect of such shots is to convey the existence of another inexplicable, irrational, supernatural world shadowing onto this one. The crime that propels the narrative is, after all, a psychic’s recognition of a killer in her audience and precognition that this killer will kill again. Here, by contrast, the world that is unveiled is one which was, alas, all too real.

Yet this also foregrounds one area in which Bido actually goes further than Argento as he takes what was a relatively under-developed subtext in Deep Red and Suspiria and transforms it into a more explicit theme, resulting in a tragic killer-as-victim figure that rivals any in the giallo canon.

Perhaps the greater irony, however, is that a number of facets of the hidden history which constitutes The Cat with the Eyes of Jade’s narrative also emerge when we consider the film’s own mistreatment. Thanks to being released in the USA under the frankly exploitative title Watch Me When I Kill (tagline: “When I go berserk...you're better off dead!”) with the kind of dubbing that makes it all but impossible to fairly evaluate the dialogue and performances, the film was virtually guaranteed to be ignored by the kind of critic who might otherwise have recognised its thematic affinities with the arthouse and have appreciated Bido’s intent.

While I do not wish to claim that The Cat with the Eyes of Jade is a lost masterpiece, I would argue that it is a film that deserves to be rediscovered and re-evaluated in its own terms – broadly speaking those of a European popular cinema aspiring to more than the lowest common denominator – without prejudice. This is what it deserves, not least for being a film which is itself ultimately about the dangers of forgetting the past and of responding to the unfamiliar through easy stereotypical formulations.

Solamente nero / The Bloodstained Shadow

Young mathematician Stefano D'Archangelo (Lino Capolicchio) returns to the Venetian island of Murano to recuperate from a nervous illness. After chatting with young artist/designer Sandra Sellani (Stefani Casini – Suspiria) on the train, he is met off the ferry by his older brother Paolo (Craig Hill), now the island's priest.


Who saw her die and who caused her demise - the girl in the flashbacks


Stefano


Paolo; perhaps the shot / reverse shot construction of the sequence in the restaurant retrospectively conveys the distance between the brothers?

The brothers go for a meal and to catch up on what has been happening, with Paolo voicing his frustration at his inability to do anything about Murano's degenerates and deviants – an atheistic gay aristocrat with paedophile tendencies; a doctor whom he suspects to have murdered his wife and who refuses to use his wealth and influence to help the poor and disadvantaged; and a midwife rumoured to have a crazy son and to performs illegal abortions – all of whom also participate in seances conducted by a medium.








Solamente Nero is a term that also applies to many of the film's visuals

During the night Paolo is awoken by a noise. Going to the window, he sees two figures struggling in the street. Stefano arrives and the brothers go to investigate, but find nothing amidst the darkness and torrential rain.

Paolo finds a note warning him of the consequences of delving further into the matter: “If one speaks of murder, yours will be talked about.” He and Stefano debate what to do, only for their discussion to be rendered irrelevant when the medium's body is found strangled elsewhere on the island, the mode of her death recalling a still-unsolved child murder from their youth and triggering one of Stefano's nervous attacks.

When Paolo narrowly avoids being crushed by a falling stone crucifix – the symbolism of the scene is obvious, if effectively staged – it becomes clear the killer intends to make good on his threat. Yet, in that he is also targetting the same corrupting influences Paolo had earlier railed against, continuing with the Count, the killer also confusingly appears have some common ground with the priest himself.

Had not Paolo earlier remarked that the count was “a most despicable individual... without morals,” and that “it might be better if he disappeared from the face of the earth.”?

Meanwhile, courting Sandra and visiting her mother's house in Venice, Stefano happens upon a painting that triggers another one of his attacks...




Two brothers who cannot face one another nor the truth?

This 1978 giallo from Antonio Bido starts off promisingly with two impressively mounted murder set pieces – an impressionistic slow-motion flashback whose meaning is gradually determined as the investigation develops and a classic expressionistic dark and stormy night – but thereafter seems to lose its way somewhat.

The chief culprit here is the romantic subplot between Stefano and Sandra, which seems somewhat shoehorned in at times, never more than in an awkwardly handled love scene which neither performers Lino Capolocchio and Stefania Casini – both of whom are otherwise pretty good in their respective roles – nor Bido seem very comfortable with. (Admittedly the same could be said, for instance, of the comparable scene in The Cat o' Nine Tails, but there one gets the impression that a sense of unease – even disgust – is more deliberate than accidental thematically.)

In a similar vein whilst the evocation of life in a small town provides for a change of pace and the Venetian locations impart their usual picturesque qualities – mist shrouded canals, winding passageways etc. – those with a liking for more kitschy and trashy fare may feel a bit short-changed since while Bido's visuals style is certainly dynamic, his use of handheld-camera, zooms, canted angles, extreme close-ups and jarring cuts – i.e. all the standard tropes of the giallo – is judicious rather than grandstanding for the most part, and his colour palette, lighting and design largely subdued.






Sandra is stalked through the alleys of Venice before Stefano makes his appearance, looking like he's wearing Dracula's cape here

Two set-pieces perhaps best encapsulate Solamente Nero / The Bloodstained Shadow's qualities.

The first is the aforementioned debate between the brothers. Bido frames their exchange in a mirror, such that they appear to be facing opposite directions. In many gialli – The Case of the Bloody Iris is a particularly good counterpoint here – this would likely be a throwaway piece of visual trickery for its own sake. Here, however, it becomes invested with meaning, suggesting the distance between the brothers and their paths through life – a classic set of binary oppositions, between science and religion, reason and faith, staying and leaving Murano, sexual relationships and celibacy etc. – along with the fact that we do not have a full picture of either man.


The art of darkness


The child in the primal scene

The problem, speaking here from the perspective of the more mainstream giallo, is that this then weakens our point of identification. We do not have one character we know to be innocent of the crimes to function our surrogate as detective committed to unveiling the truth. If we comparing Stefano to The Bird with the Crystal Plumage's Sam Dalmas and Deep Red's Marc Daly, the key difference is that when he recalls his moment of trauma he does not know his place within the scene, whether he was an innocent witness or the perpetrator. (It's perhaps not too much of a spoiler to indicate those aware of the rules of the game as far as red herrings and suspects go will be able to work out the identity of the killer without too much difficulty.)






The awkward love scene

It is also such differences that help Bido's film find its own identity rather than simply coming across as ersatz Argento – and a comparison with Tenebrae might be interesting here – as also seen in the way that the medium is here presented as a Trauma-style fake than the genuine article as with Deep Red, or in Stefano's Stendhal Syndrome-esque interludes when confronted by the enigmatic painting.

The second is a long wordless passage where the handheld I-camera stalks Sandra through the sidestreets and canals of Venice. The sequence goes on for what seems like an eternity and is undoubtedly effective in terms of suspense and shock dynamics, with a textbook Lewtonian “bus” moment as Sandra is startled by a drunken accordion player who jumps out at her for no particular reason, but seems ultimately a touch gratuitous when the figure who finally emerges is Stefano.




Broken dolls...


... ocular close ups...


... black gloved hands removing a vital visual fragment

Again, however, given the aforementioned questions as to his role – further enhanced here by the way Bido has the character dressed and framed – or the possibility that our perspective has imperceptibly shifted from one stalker to another, with Stefano's presence possibly scaring an actual would-be attacker away, other interpretations are certainly possible.

As with The Cat with the Eyes of Jade / Watch Me When I Kill, Bido employs a very Goblin-esque score along with the occasional diegetically located classical interlude. Here however, the music was actually performed by the group, although for contractual reasons it is Stelvio Cipriani's name that appears on the credits.

Indeed, it's perhaps Goblin's score that encapsulates the ambiguous position of The Bloodstained Shadow in relation to the art and filone cinemas, insufficiently respectable and concerned with exhibiting the approved taste for the former – or, possibly, perhaps trying too hard for crossover appeal to it, in the manner of the prog-rock concept album – yet a touch too idiosyncratic and non-formulaic for the latter.

Once again “their” respective losses prove “our” gains in terms of the pleasures of interpreting – that is both reading and re-writing – the giallo text, above all in trying to tease out all those contradictions and our own responses to them, in my case as (self-)conscious (self-)marginal(ising) would-be intellectual...