Watching Abuso di potere – i.e. literally Abuse of Power, but released under the more enigmatic Shadows Unseen – in the same week as Berlusconi was jailed gives the 1972 film a certain continuing relevance.
The more things change the more they stay the same...
On a more personal level, it was also interesting to compare with my viewing of a few days ago, Colpo rovente, it being another police film exploring the same theme, high-reaching corruption, but a contrasting narrative structure.
For whereas Colpo rovente begins with a death at the hands of persons unknown, here we begin with a death where the identities of at least some of those involved, if not their exact roles, are presented.
Investigative journalist Gagliari goes to a club; talks briefly with Simona (Marilu Tolo); visits money lender Rosenthal (Corrado Gaipa), from whom he recovers a distinctive ring; indicates that he is leaving on business for a few days; departs with hooker Rosaria, and is then set upon, beaten and shot dead by a group of men.
After some discussion amongst the police and political leaders, the decision is made to bring Inspector Luca Micheli (Frederick Stafford) in to conduct the investigation. Micheli has been persona non grata since he used the same illegal methods as many of his colleagues, but happened to do so on the wrong suspect/perpetrator – i.e. someone with connections. He’s also, predictably, the type whose dedication to the job has cost him his family.
Aided more or less only by his loyal sidekick, Micheli begins his investigations. An anonymous tip-off leads them to Delogo, a known mafioso with an impressive record on beating the charges against him. After a beating Delogo confesses to the crime, but Micheli’s intuition tells him what we would already know, even if we had walked in to the film five minutes late; after all, we’re only one-third of the way into the running time.
Getting the forename of the woman seen with Gagliari, Micheli pulls in a low-level drug dealer (Pasolini regular Ninetto Davoli) and extracts here whereabouts, this time more with the threat of violence. Visiting Rosaria’s apartment, the investigators find her dead, the victim of adulterated heroin. And so it goes until it becomes increasingly evident what we already more or less knew.
The only matters that remain in doubt are whether Micheli will agree to forget what he discovers and become one of the conspirators, or whether he will continue to fight against them and, if so, with what type of outcome.
Extreme cynicism was rife in the police film internationally in the early 1970s, as a basic schism between the ideals of law and order became increasingly apparent. To give a few examples:
Callahan in Dirty Harry knew that Scorpio was the killer stalking San Francisco, but could not prove this and found his methods led to Scorpio’s being released by too-liberal judges.
Then Magnum Force saw Callahan going up against a self-appointed execution squad of fellow cops who were going too far – a plot point that seems more about box-office than consistent characterisation, at least from a cursory recollection. Certainly I remember preferring Steno’s La polizia ringrazzia, with its decidedly more downbeat treatment of a similar theme.
Or in the UK there is the first film outing of The Sweeney, in which Regan reluctantly investigates the death of a call-girl at the behest of a small-time villain, then realises he has uncovered a big-time conspiracy when said villain also dies and he is suspended from the force on trumped up charges. While the X-certificate given the film allowed for more sex, violence and bad language than the TV series from which it came, its televisual origins were also apparent. There was an obvious need for Regan to ultimately triumph. His regular boss, whose presence would have complicated the conspiracy narrative, was also a conspicuous – or is that structural? – absence.
In each case a further tension is the divide between providing genre entertainment and socio-political critique – and further, what form that critique should take. Here the entertainment aspect is foregrounded in a brief interlude between Micheli and Simona, albeit one tempered by a clear sense that this is a matter of business and not love, and a Remy Julienne-staged car chase. There’s also a shoot-out, and a couple of punch-ups where the blows have that exaggerated, conventional car-door-slamming sound.
The critique is, as might be expected, more muddled.
But then that could be said to be a reflection of a perceived situation where no-one had the answers?
But that could then be said to be a reflection of a perceived situation where no-one had the answers?
The final shot of the film, noted by an IMDB reviewer, is curious in this regard. On one layer, it appears to be a freeze-frame. Clearly, however, it is in fact an optical printing, since on the other layer, there is the motion of a swinging telephone receiver. The two images, previously united, have become fragmented.
On the subject of fragments, parts of Riz Ortolani’s score are reminiscent of cues for Cannibal Holocaust – the discordant strings, but minus the synthesiser bleeps – and Don’t Torture a Duckling – the powerful percussion, but minus Ornella Vanonni’s vocals, that accompany Maciara's death scene.
Showing posts with label Marilu' Tolo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marilu' Tolo. Show all posts
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Le Notti della violenza / Night of Violence / Callgirl '66
A masked killer stalking beautiful young women. An ineffectual police investigation. Drugs. A fatal fall.
No, it’s not Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace but rather Roberto Mauri’s Night(s) of Violence, co-scripted with Eduardo Mulargia and also known by the immediately dated title Callgirl ’66.
With a listed running time of 91 minutes, the version under review is shorn of about 14 minutes, mostly dealing with the drug smuggling subplot and thus playing up the film’s horror and thriller aspects.
Despite the elements outlined at the start, I would hesitate to identify the film as an early giallo except in a roundabout krimi / shocker / pulp way. Yes, Bava was undoubtedly inspired by these sources as well, as indicated by Nora Davis’s acting like the heroine of one of the pulp thrillers she compulsively reads, but it’s near impossible, I would argue, to imagine Blood and Black Lace in particular working as text or fotoromanzo.
This is not the case here, with lots of static, talky police procedural scenes and not much in the way of set pieces, the maniac having a tendency to savagely attack with little or no build up or use of suspense devices.
While his motivation and back-story are suitably outlandish and grounded in a traumatic experience they also have a distinctly 1950s feel to them. Rather than wearing a stocking mask that serves to hide his features, he also wears a Phantom of the Opera / V for Vendetta type mask, tellingly modelled on the face of a Grand Guignol actor. If the inclusion of this character affords the filmmakers a degree of reflexivity, they don’t make particularly good use of it, the actor also having an iron-cast alibi for the night in question that fails to really establish him as obvious red herring or suspect.
This backwards rather than forward looking feel is further compounded by the black and white realist / noir / traditional expressionist visuals and the associations these further strengthen with the likes of The Embalmer, Eyes without a Face and – given the presence of Alberto Lupo there as well – Seddok.
Marilu Tolo has an early appearance as the girl investigating her sister’s murder.
No, it’s not Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace but rather Roberto Mauri’s Night(s) of Violence, co-scripted with Eduardo Mulargia and also known by the immediately dated title Callgirl ’66.
With a listed running time of 91 minutes, the version under review is shorn of about 14 minutes, mostly dealing with the drug smuggling subplot and thus playing up the film’s horror and thriller aspects.
Despite the elements outlined at the start, I would hesitate to identify the film as an early giallo except in a roundabout krimi / shocker / pulp way. Yes, Bava was undoubtedly inspired by these sources as well, as indicated by Nora Davis’s acting like the heroine of one of the pulp thrillers she compulsively reads, but it’s near impossible, I would argue, to imagine Blood and Black Lace in particular working as text or fotoromanzo.
This is not the case here, with lots of static, talky police procedural scenes and not much in the way of set pieces, the maniac having a tendency to savagely attack with little or no build up or use of suspense devices.
While his motivation and back-story are suitably outlandish and grounded in a traumatic experience they also have a distinctly 1950s feel to them. Rather than wearing a stocking mask that serves to hide his features, he also wears a Phantom of the Opera / V for Vendetta type mask, tellingly modelled on the face of a Grand Guignol actor. If the inclusion of this character affords the filmmakers a degree of reflexivity, they don’t make particularly good use of it, the actor also having an iron-cast alibi for the night in question that fails to really establish him as obvious red herring or suspect.
This backwards rather than forward looking feel is further compounded by the black and white realist / noir / traditional expressionist visuals and the associations these further strengthen with the likes of The Embalmer, Eyes without a Face and – given the presence of Alberto Lupo there as well – Seddok.
Marilu Tolo has an early appearance as the girl investigating her sister’s murder.
Saturday, 2 February 2008
Las Trompetas del apocalipsis / I Caldi amori di una minorenne / Perversion Story
There's a cartoon by the American artist Raymond Pettitbon which shows a naked, Manson-esque tripping hippie leaping off a building, a thought bubble indicating that the drum solo he's hearing is so good he wants to take it with him.
It's an image which came to mind when watching this 1969 giallo that opens with not one but two such leaps, those of music professor John Stone and student Catherine Milford.
News of Professor Stone's death significantly prompts a desperate attempt to save Catherine from her fate
The police unimaginatively conclude that they are dealing with two separate suicides. Stone had a history of mental illness, whilst Catherine was distraught at the break-up of her relationship with her erstwhile boyfriend, Boris the Romanian. Though a throughly unpleasant and unsympathetic character – traits that seem linked to his foreign status, which everyone incessantly remarks upon – he had a solid alibi.
Moreover, Catherine's room was locked from the inside, making it been impossible for anyone else to have thrown her out the window – unless, of course, you've read any S S Van Dine or seen, say, The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh. Yet why then did she leap out a closed window, rather than an open one like Stone?
It's questions like this which impel Catherine's flatmate Helen and brother Richard, recently returned from overseas to an unfamiliar London and news he did not anticipate, to conduct their own investigation. Their quest for the truth takes them into the city's hippie underworld, centring on the trendy nightclub the Mouse Hole and its denizens, further murders and / or suicides and ultimately the kind of shock ending which stretches credulity, even by the standards of the form.
Moody lighting
The film is also one of three, all released in the same year, to have somewhat confusingly borne the Perversion Story AKA in English release, along with Lucio Fulci's giallo Una sull altra and historical drama Beatrice Cenci.
The Fulci connection can be taken further, insofar as Spanish writer-director Julio Buchs' take on Swinging London is rather similar to the one Fulci scripted for Riccardo Freda's giallo A Doppia Faccia and later presented in his own Lizard in a Woman's Skin. It's that same mixture of fascination, distaste and non-comprehension, half South Park's Mr Mackie's “drugs are bad” and half Eric Cartman's nightmares of “filthy hippies,” and one which was no doubt useful in both selling the film to young Spanish audiences and justifying it to the Francoist old guard in the censors office.
Drugs are bad, mkay?
The film also exhibits that amusingly skewed outsider's view of its location also seen in so many krimis and a number of gialli, with the dubbing voices talent a mixture of mockney accents and the urban geography creative to say the least, where the taxi taking Richard to Catherine's goes from the Houses of Parliament to Piccadilly Circus to A N Other street and the chimes of Big Ben can apparently be heard anywhere within the city.
Gianni Ferrio's soundtrack is also all over the place, mixing experimental horror movie music, jerk beat, wild jazz, easy listening, syrupy strings and psychedelic cues. At least this is clearly the intention, however, as a means of further foregrounding the clash between conservative / conservatory and contemporary cultures and idioms:
Richard: “We know each other, don't we – you work at the Mouse Hole?”
Harry: “Yes, I work as a disc jockey at that horrible place. Surprised to see a low-brow job like that given to Stone's star pupil? He hated the music played there as much as I do. But it's a way of earning my living [...] I'm like everyone else – I must eat after all. So at night I put beatnik clothes on, put a beatnik wig on with all the trimmings. And for hours I play that sickening so-called music at the Mouse Hole.”)
Is that a thinner Harry Knowles on the right?
Hippies!!!
Brett Halsey makes for a uncomplicated, no-nonsense lead, quick to resort to his fists or revolver, while Marilu' Tolo is adequate as Helen but lacks the spark which an Edwige Fenech or Barbara Bouchet would have brought to the role.
And the hurdy gurdy man
Tellingly in the light of the film's conservatism, a romance develops between the two but doesn't go particularly far beyond this, with there likewise remaining a clear division between the suspects in the crime and the non-suspects. This is emphatically not the kind of film where we are going to learn that Helen was in fact Catherine's lover and killer, motivated by Catherine's leaving her for another woman and that she subsequently moved to seduce Richard to throw him off the scent.
Buchs' contribution is bland and predictable, the kind of direction where you can predict when there will be a shock zoom, when handheld camera is going to be used or when there will be some expressionistic distortions to convey a drug state or suchlike. The cinematography does look good, however, with effectively moody lighting and/or vibrant colours.
Ultimately your response to the film is likely to come down to its McGuffin. Personally I can't decide if it's smart, dumb or something of both. I can't help thinking, however, that a more imaginative director could have made something special out of the film and its McGuffin, the titular Trumpets of the Apocalypse, while avoiding its too easy demonisation of the hippie.
The film was issued on video by Retel in the UK, with a AVI file of it being available from Cinemageddon; Ferrio's soundtrack can be found here.
It's an image which came to mind when watching this 1969 giallo that opens with not one but two such leaps, those of music professor John Stone and student Catherine Milford.
News of Professor Stone's death significantly prompts a desperate attempt to save Catherine from her fate
The police unimaginatively conclude that they are dealing with two separate suicides. Stone had a history of mental illness, whilst Catherine was distraught at the break-up of her relationship with her erstwhile boyfriend, Boris the Romanian. Though a throughly unpleasant and unsympathetic character – traits that seem linked to his foreign status, which everyone incessantly remarks upon – he had a solid alibi.
Moreover, Catherine's room was locked from the inside, making it been impossible for anyone else to have thrown her out the window – unless, of course, you've read any S S Van Dine or seen, say, The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh. Yet why then did she leap out a closed window, rather than an open one like Stone?
It's questions like this which impel Catherine's flatmate Helen and brother Richard, recently returned from overseas to an unfamiliar London and news he did not anticipate, to conduct their own investigation. Their quest for the truth takes them into the city's hippie underworld, centring on the trendy nightclub the Mouse Hole and its denizens, further murders and / or suicides and ultimately the kind of shock ending which stretches credulity, even by the standards of the form.
Moody lighting
The film is also one of three, all released in the same year, to have somewhat confusingly borne the Perversion Story AKA in English release, along with Lucio Fulci's giallo Una sull altra and historical drama Beatrice Cenci.
The Fulci connection can be taken further, insofar as Spanish writer-director Julio Buchs' take on Swinging London is rather similar to the one Fulci scripted for Riccardo Freda's giallo A Doppia Faccia and later presented in his own Lizard in a Woman's Skin. It's that same mixture of fascination, distaste and non-comprehension, half South Park's Mr Mackie's “drugs are bad” and half Eric Cartman's nightmares of “filthy hippies,” and one which was no doubt useful in both selling the film to young Spanish audiences and justifying it to the Francoist old guard in the censors office.
Drugs are bad, mkay?
The film also exhibits that amusingly skewed outsider's view of its location also seen in so many krimis and a number of gialli, with the dubbing voices talent a mixture of mockney accents and the urban geography creative to say the least, where the taxi taking Richard to Catherine's goes from the Houses of Parliament to Piccadilly Circus to A N Other street and the chimes of Big Ben can apparently be heard anywhere within the city.
Gianni Ferrio's soundtrack is also all over the place, mixing experimental horror movie music, jerk beat, wild jazz, easy listening, syrupy strings and psychedelic cues. At least this is clearly the intention, however, as a means of further foregrounding the clash between conservative / conservatory and contemporary cultures and idioms:
Richard: “We know each other, don't we – you work at the Mouse Hole?”
Harry: “Yes, I work as a disc jockey at that horrible place. Surprised to see a low-brow job like that given to Stone's star pupil? He hated the music played there as much as I do. But it's a way of earning my living [...] I'm like everyone else – I must eat after all. So at night I put beatnik clothes on, put a beatnik wig on with all the trimmings. And for hours I play that sickening so-called music at the Mouse Hole.”)
Is that a thinner Harry Knowles on the right?
Hippies!!!
Brett Halsey makes for a uncomplicated, no-nonsense lead, quick to resort to his fists or revolver, while Marilu' Tolo is adequate as Helen but lacks the spark which an Edwige Fenech or Barbara Bouchet would have brought to the role.
And the hurdy gurdy man
Tellingly in the light of the film's conservatism, a romance develops between the two but doesn't go particularly far beyond this, with there likewise remaining a clear division between the suspects in the crime and the non-suspects. This is emphatically not the kind of film where we are going to learn that Helen was in fact Catherine's lover and killer, motivated by Catherine's leaving her for another woman and that she subsequently moved to seduce Richard to throw him off the scent.
Buchs' contribution is bland and predictable, the kind of direction where you can predict when there will be a shock zoom, when handheld camera is going to be used or when there will be some expressionistic distortions to convey a drug state or suchlike. The cinematography does look good, however, with effectively moody lighting and/or vibrant colours.
Ultimately your response to the film is likely to come down to its McGuffin. Personally I can't decide if it's smart, dumb or something of both. I can't help thinking, however, that a more imaginative director could have made something special out of the film and its McGuffin, the titular Trumpets of the Apocalypse, while avoiding its too easy demonisation of the hippie.
The film was issued on video by Retel in the UK, with a AVI file of it being available from Cinemageddon; Ferrio's soundtrack can be found here.
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